We’re used to enjoying our favorite cup of tea using tea bags (which are honestly messy, especially when it’s time to throw them in the bin), but did you know that there are other options to enjoy a hot cup of tea? These Pique tea crystals are a less messy alternative: 

Now let me explain: at first glance, Pique’s tea crystals definitely look a lot like those influencer-endorsed tummy tea products that never seem to leave your Instagram feed. However, what makes these tea crystals truly unique is the cold-brewing process used to create them, as brewing whole-leaf tea at low temperatures, for longer durations of time, supposedly preserves the active compounds found in tea at maximum potential, according to the brand website. 

And yes, the easy-to-use factor of these tea bags is definitely worth writing home about, as they instantly dissolve into water at any temperature, whether it’s ice cold or piping hot. This makes it a major win for iced-tea fanatics (like yours truly), as whipping up some unsweetened iced vanilla rooibos tea only took me a matter of seconds instead of waiting for it to steep. 

In short, Pique’s innovative crystals are definitely a must-see for tea drinkers who are looking to skip out on both the longer steeping times, and annoying messes associated with traditional tea bags. 

Image via The Daily Beast 

When the climate gets warm enough, we may have to turn to desperate measures, like altering our own atmosphere. What could possibly go wrong? Putting stuff up in the stratosphere to block the sun's rays might work, but that has happened before, like in 1816, the year without a summer. Besides, we'd probably need solar energy just to launch the scheme, which is akin to biting off our noses to spite our faces. Or it might work. Kurzgesagt has some details. -via Damn Interesting

This is the quokka, a marsupial native to Western Australia. Like the other marsupials native to the country, such as the kangaroo and the wallaby, quokkas are herbivores and are mainly nocturnal. But one thing that sets the quokka apart from the aforementioned animals is its smile, which John Wells describes as “perpetual”.

Cute!

Image via John Wells on Facebook

Chicago — About a week ago, Antoine Tissier was flying his drone on Lincoln Park, trying to capture the sunset. But this day was about to give him something even more beautiful than what he had in mind. As he flew his drone across the park,...

he spotted a couple having a photoshoot under the Ulysses S. Grant monument in Lincoln Park. Antoine quickly captured the view, landed his drone, and tried to catch up with the couple. Unfortunately, by the time he reached the monument, the people were already gone.

The photographer decided to post the spectacular shot on Instagram in hopes of tracking down the mysterious couple. “Unexpected picture of a mysterious #couple we are trying to identify!” Antoine wrote in the description of the picture. Thanks to the power of social media, it only took a few days for the photographer to find the couple he captured.

So how did Tissier manage to find the couple?

The answers over at Bored Panda.

(Image Credit: tissier.antoine/ Bored Panda)

(Image Credit: cranesweddings/ Bored Panda)

Do you know what’s rarer than finding out that your friend wore a shirt similar to yours? It’s finding out that the rug you have has the same pattern as the one on the napkin that you’re holding. I’d say it’s a one in a million chance. Or is it much slimmer than that? What do you think?

(Image Credit: u/madewitheggs/ Reddit)

A 90-year-old-woman was always observing gym workouts from the gym near her apartment. Tessa Sollom Williams spectates from 7 a.m to 7 p.m. Sometimes, she even tries to copy the moves of people who were working out at the gym. Hearing about Sollom Williams, the gym that she has been observing every day decided to paint a mural to honor her and any onlookers that may be watching their fitness classes from afar, as the Washington Post details: 

“I see them doing such hard exercises. My goodness me!” said Sollom Williams, who was born in London and in her youth was a professional ballerina for 15 years.

She now lives alone at an assisted-living facility, and observing the outdoor fitness classes has been her sole source of motivation and entertainment during the pandemic.

“I never miss it,” she said, adding that she gives her daughter an update on the classes during their daily phone calls.

Watching the training sessions has had such a significant impact on Sollom Williams that her daughter felt compelled to write an email to the Balance Gym at Thomas Circle to thank them.

“Her worst days are rain days and she worries if your members are okay and getting their exercise,” she continued. “I hope you can share with your members that they have given an elderly lady much joy in seeing them embrace health and life.”

For the gym staff, the unexpected email was a bright spot after months of coronavirus-induced business challenges.

“It made our day. It was very timely and much-needed,” said Maier, 39, co-chief executive and part-owner of the gym, explaining membership has dwindled and times have been tough.

Image via the Washington Post 

Sun Woo Chang, a fashion designer from South Korea, says that she felt inspired by the tents used by homeless people in London:

When I was in London, I saw homeless people sleeping in their pop-up tents and carrying them as portable homes. I thought that was the lifestyle I had dreamed of, as I somehow felt that I never really belonged to a certain group since childhood. Based on these ideas, I started to create garments as portable homes, like ‘refuge-wear’ from my reality.

Her series, which is titled "In Between", uses PVC pipes and wire frames that pop out stretched fabric. Like tents, they can be knocked down into compact spaces. Each outfit is thus a wearable, portable home.

-via Dornob

What's going to stop your kids from getting to school on time? Nothing, so as long as they're riding in this bus. Core77 tells us about the Praetorian, a bus platform manufactured by a Czech company called Torsus. It's available for a variety of purposes, including as a military command vehicle and an anti-riot vehicle. It's made to go where other vehicles can't:

The 4x4 Praetorian can carry 36 passengers, handle gnarly angles, clear obstacles 13.4 inches in height and wade through nearly three feet of water.

Imagine where Miss Frizzle could go in this bus!

After the disappointment of The Rise of Skywalker, Disney and Lucasfilm gave us a salve to our broken Star Wars fan hearts with a TV series called The Mandalorian. A Star Wars western? Okay. Then they outright stole our hearts by presenting us with a baby Yoda. Not Yoda himself, but a juvenile of the same species that's cuter than he/she has any right to be. But The Mandalorian really redeemed the Star Wars universe by giving us an adventure that has nothing to do with dynasties or death stars. Screen Junkies likes The Mandalorian, too, but they still find ways to poke fun at the series.  

Bryan Lee made a fan film using the 2001 song "Wonderboy" by Tenacious D and film clips from all eleven Star Wars movies. Neat idea, but then you watch it and realize the editing is a sublime exercise in paying attention to detail. Well done! See it in widescreen format at YouTube. -via reddit

Robert E. Jackson collects old photographs, which include quite a few images of people wearing bizarre homemade costumes. They are heavy on the idea of turning people into mundane household objects, like the young lady above who dressed as a TV set (complete with remote on a wire) in 1971. You'll also see cigarette packs, a bottle of glue, cameras from different eras, a packet of dental floss, and a group of boys bizarrely dressed as Tampax. Then there's the robot made from a water heater. See the gallery of odd costumes at Flashbak. See more of Jackson's vintage photos at Instagram. -Thanks, WTM!

At one time in history, it was possible to buy a light bulb that would last more than 100 years. We know this because one of those bulbs is still burning at a fire station in California, 119 years after it was first switched on. Once incandescent lighting was unleashed into the public, everyone was working to make a better light bulb. So why aren't light bulbs built to last that way today?   

The early 1920s was both a great and terrible time to be a lightbulb manufacturer,  as the ongoing electrification of the world saw consumers buying electrical appliances like lightbulbs at an unprecedented rate. But this boom came at a price, as hundreds of smaller lightbulb manufacturers popped up around the world, increasing competition and decreasing the market share for any one company. Furthermore, lightbulb technology had reached a point where some bulbs lasted up to 2500 hours, limiting the number of replacements a consumer would have to buy in a lifetime. These developments proved disastrous for manufacturers like German firm Osram, which saw its sales plummet by more than 55% between 1922 and 1923.

What to do? The obvious answer was to organize a cartel, regulate prices, and set a limit on light bulb longevity. Read how that happened, and why your light bulbs never last long enough, at Today I Found Out.

(Image credit: LPS.1)

Around 10,000-15,000 years ago, a person small in stature, possibly a young teenager or a short adult woman from the Pleistocene period, traveled across the ancient White Sands without a group. That person cut through a route where big mammals, such as mammoths and giant ground sloths, crossed during different times of day.

The person’s gait is uneven, as if they were carrying a load on their left hip. And three spots along the northbound trail reveal what that load must have been: a toddler, probably around three years old. The child’s small feet left their own tracks when their guardian set them down just long enough to rest or switch arms.

The question is, why?

Learn more about this interesting story over at Ars Technica.

(Image Credit: Ars Technica)

Artificial intelligence has played a big role in many advancements in medicine, and it once again did just that in this scientific study. This time, AI helped in assessing a person’s risk of having Alzheimer’s by analyzing the said person’s word usage.

Other researchers have already trained various models to look for signs of cognitive impairments, including Alzheimer’s, by using different types of data, such as brain scans and clinical test results. But the latest work stands out because it used historical information from the multigenerational Framingham Heart Study, which has been tracking the health of more than 14,000 people from three generations since 1948. If the new models’ ability to pick up trends in such data holds up in forward-looking studies of bigger and more diverse populations, researchers say they could predict the development of Alzheimer’s a number of years before symptoms become severe enough for typical diagnostic methods to pick up. And such a screening tool would not require invasive tests or scans. The results of the Pfizer-funded and IBM-run study were published on Thursday in EClinicalMedicine.

Now that’s just amazing.

Learn more about this over at Scientific American.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: geralt/ Pixabay)

Driving requires intense focus on the part of the driver. He has to be aware of his surroundings by regularly scanning the environment. He also has to keep a good eye on road signs. In short, driving is a difficult activity for us humans. And if it’s hard for us, that means it’s harder for a computer. With those things in mind, Tesla might have just made a breakthrough in autonomous driving.

“Elon, you mad man.”

That was one reaction to Tesla’s latest “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) beta, an upgrade to the electric car company’s self-driving suite that CEO Elon Musk called a “quantum leap,” by an owner who was selected to test it out this week.

[...]

The new update allows the vehicle to highlight everything on the road, including pedestrians, unmarked lane dividers, and even parked cars on the side.

If this does not amaze you, I don’t know what will.

Learn more details about this news over at Futurism.

(Image Credit: Tesla Raj/ YouTube)