Some of us seem to be naturally distinguished gentlemen, while others seem to be born boars. A viral clip shows a baby, supposedly from Ecuador, with a full, bushy mustache, worthy of an aristocrat or perhaps the video-game hero Mario, depending on interpretation. Some might perceive newborn’s looks as villainous, others as noble.

Images manipulating the clip poured in, even depicting the baby as a “Supreme Leader.” Netizens placed the baby in different costumes from around this wretched earth as well as with a cigar in hand and mouth like a “true player,” for example.

While the internet seems to think the baby has all the potential it the world, members of the online community also remark that he gives the impression of already bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders. One commenter penned, “He was born retired with three kids and two mortgages.”

WION points out that babies can be born with soft, fine, and unpigmented hair called lanugo that usually vanishes before birth but can remain for a few weeks after. Lanugo clearly would not compose the dark mustache of today’s speculation. WION also notes that there are indicators, glitches included, that the mustache is the product of technological tricks.

This Baby Looks Like a Middle-Aged Man Thanks to His Suspiciously Perfect Mustache

Granted, excess hair on babies is no laughing matter, as it could be caused by congenital hypertrichosis, which may cover the entire body or a specific area. Historically, those with hypertrichosis, which has been unkindly dubbed “werewolf syndrome,” have been stigmatized.

There have been cases of babies developing hypertrichosis from physical contact with parents using topical minoxidil, an antidote to hair loss. After the parents stopped applying the medication, the condition observed in the infants reversed itself.

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Many new parents rely on their own parents for childcare, especially when they return to work after parental leave. While this is common in many families, it’s crucial to consider how this expectation affects your parents’ health. In fact, some grandmas are actually experiencing what experts call “depleted grandma syndrome.”

What Is Depleted Grandma Syndrome?

According to Dr. Ashwini Nadkarni, psychiatrist and assistant professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, “Depleted grandmother syndrome refers to the phenomenon of caregiving burnout that can befall grandmothers who have a significant role in caregiving for their grandchildren.” 

Today, new parents often rely on their parents—their children’s grandparents—to care for their kids while they work, as they can’t afford daycare or time off. Most often, grandmothers, not grandfathers, take on this responsibility. 

Though it’s not a true medical diagnosis, depleted grandma syndrome accurately describes a common yet harmful experience many grandmothers face. And as Dr. Nadkarni notes, this syndrome “does have some overlap with a proposed diagnostic entity, ‘depletion syndrome of the elderly’ from the 1980s, which was thought to be a mental health disorder in which geriatric individuals experienced depressive symptoms with prominent physical symptoms.” 

The Rise of Depleted Grandma Syndrome

While grandmothers have provided childcare for generations, this added stress and pressure on aging adults can be especially harmful in today’s climate.

“We need to look at how family life has changed,” says Jane Eagle, CPT3A, Inclusion Manager and Designated Safeguarding Lead at Crimson Global Academy. “More households rely on two incomes, and childcare costs can be enormous. This means grandparents are often needed more than ever.”

“At the same time, many grandparents are still working, facing financial pressures or caring for a partner, an ageing parent or another family member,” she adds. “Some are managing their own health concerns.”

As they say: it takes a village to raise a child. But at the same time, no grandparent should feel responsible for becoming a primary caregiver for their grandchild—especially not at the detriment of their own health and wellbeing.

“Expectations can differ between generations, too,” Eagle states. “Parents may expect regular childcare, while grandparents may see their role as providing love, guidance, and support without taking on a second parenting role. When those expectations aren’t discussed, it can lead to resentment on both sides.”

Warning Signs of Depleted Grandma Syndrome

Whether you’re the new parent leaning a little too heavily on your mother/mother-in-law or you’re the depleted grandmother yourself, it’s important to notice the signs of this syndrome and address them immediately.

“In depleted grandmother syndrome, individuals experience the emotional exhaustion characteristic of caregiving burnout because of the intensive demands of caregiving without boundaries,” Dr. Nadkarni says. “With this, people might feel irritable, on edge, overwhelmed, resentful, or even guilty.”

This is especially true if the grandmother is still juggling work and other responsibilities, or is battling a chronic illness or other condition.

“From a family wellbeing perspective, I would be concerned when a grandmother feels there simply aren’t enough hours in the day, or when caring for her grandchildren consistently means putting her own needs and commitments aside,” Eagle adds. “Disappointment or resentment can also be a sign that the arrangement needs an honest conversation. A grandparent may have understood her role as offering occasional support, while the family has gradually come to depend on regular childcare.”

Protecting Grandmas From Depleted Grandma Syndrome

Rather than continuing to rely on or take advantage of (knowingly or not) the depleted grandmother, her children should be checking in with her to ensure she’s mentally and physically well—and she should be addressing any symptoms with a healthcare professional, too.

Just because this syndrome exists does not mean grandmothers can’t still be a supportive force in their grandkid’s lives. It’s about setting the appropriate boundaries while prioritizing your own needs. A depleted grandmother will not be the most alert or stable caregiver anyway.

“As a grandmother myself, I know how special this relationship can be,” Eagle says. “But loving your grandchildren and being available to provide regular childcare are two very different things. Grandparents have their own needs, responsibilities, and relationships, and those can get overlooked when families rely heavily on their support.”

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Finally, Airbnb hosts can no longer force guests to do all their chores. Starting November 20, a new, long-needed policy bans property owners from demanding guests complete labor “typically performed by a cleaner,” like stripping beds, scrubbing dishes, or hauling trash offsite.

Finally, Airbnbs are being forced to learn a lesson hotels learned long ago: people don’t want to work on vacation, and that includes cleaning up after themselves. If you ostensibly want to run a small hotel, you had better play by the societal rules of how hotels function. The short-term rental company is ending hefty cleaning fees while also telling vacationers they can’t leave without first picking up a mop and bucket.

Several Airbnb property owners are melting down at the thought of losing out on free labor, sounding off on social media sites across the internet; one likens the company to an “abusive partner,” according to one person on the r/Airbnb_hosts subreddit. Far be it for me to pass complete judgment on someone based on a six-word sentence about a fairly silly news story, but if you’re demanding that paying vacationing guests do a series of chores before they leave, you are the abusive partner, not the middleman.

I cannot believe this story is forcing me to defend Airbnb, a company that is one of the reasons average Americans can’t buy a home anymore.

Airbnb Hosts Can No Longer Make Guests Do Their Cleaning, and Some Are Furious

As Wired discovered, someone on Facebook started a Change.org petition (because those are always so helpful) demanding the right to tell guests that when they stay at one of their Airbnb properties, they will be held to a set of “common-sense expectations.” I’m not going to post a link to this Facebook group. I want to dox anyone.

But it is a gold mine of the exact kind of personalities you would expect an Airbnb host to possess. For example, one host suggests the OP write an angry letter to Airbnb, which isn’t difficult because you can just use AI to write an email. Color me surprised that an Airbnb host, no more than a tech-savvy landlord, is putting in as little effort as possible.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky previously noted that people go on vacation to escape their chores, pointing out that nobody paying for a getaway should have to throw linens in the wash before checking out.

Guests aren’t completely off the hook for doing some chores. Under the new rules, hosts can still make small, reasonable requests, like leaving dirty dishes in the sink or taking shorter showers during a local drought. But they can’t pull out a chore wheel and assign guests tasks hotel housekeepers usually handle, via notes littered throughout the house that turn the guest into a video game character finding diary entries around levels.

Airbnb’s system will automatically block hosts from adding prohibited chores to the lists, and violators risk warnings or outright bans from the platform.

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A new scam is targeting Norwegians, and it sounds so successful that I can see it spreading to forested regions worldwide. Why forested? Because it involves following a stranger’s instructions to leave your gold in a forest, in the faint hope that someone will guard it while its value rises.

It’s utter nonsense, an utter delight to read about, and I’m sure utterly demoralizing to fall for.

A Bizarre New Scam Has Norwegians Burying Gold in the Woods for Thieves to Collect

As Bloomberg reported, Norway’s banking lobby, Finans Norge, issued an urgent warning after multiple bank clients converted their cash into physical gold, then ventured into the woods and buried it underground, effectively burying their riches pirate-style.

Neither nature nor some mysterious security force ensured the gold remained untouched. To no one’s surprise, thieves would come along and pocket the loot.

Gry Nergård, director of anti-fraud operations at Finans Norge, noted that these woodsy treasure drops first cropped up in the spring around Oslo and Bergen. Now, the lobby is frantically pleading with citizens to stop handing their savings accounts to strangers through a treasure hunt.

Finans Norge hasn’t disclosed the exact amount of missing forest-bullion, but if they have to make this kind of public announcement, you can assume it is not an insignificant number, and that a not insignificant number of people have fallen for what appears to be the work of a tech-savvy leprechaun.

The post Scammers Are Convincing People to Bury Their Gold in the Woods, and It’s Actually Working appeared first on VICE.

When some men got divorced in their 30s or 40s, they probably weren’t thinking about who would drive them to doctor’s appointments when they’re 80. Now, decades later, they’re finding out the kids they lost touch with aren’t really interested in picking up.

Researchers at Spain’s University of Granada heard stories like this while interviewing older divorced and separated adults living on their own. Some fathers had moved away after their marriages ended, gradually losing contact with their children as the years passed. One 85-year-old hadn’t seen his kids since 2013. “That’s hard, but what can I do?” he said.

The mothers in the study had their own struggles. Many raised their kids with little financial support from their ex-husbands, but those same kids were still calling and coming around to visit. Money was another story. After years of working jobs with little pay, some women couldn’t afford to hire help around the house as they got older.

A New Study Reveals the Surprising Ways Divorce Affects Men and Women Later in Life

And this isn’t limited to Spain. A U.S. study found that after divorce past 50, fathers were less likely to have frequent contact with their adult children, while mothers’ odds of staying in touch doubled. Researchers in Germany found something similar, suggesting divorced fathers face a greater risk of growing old without much family support.

In a lot of families, Mom is the one making sure everyone stays in touch. She remembers the birthdays and calls to see how the kids are doing, while Dad gets to enjoy those relationships without doing much to maintain them. Sociologists call this “kinkeeping,” and divorce can be a rude awakening for men who’ve relied on their wives to do it for years.

Friends aren’t always available to fill that void, either. According to the Survey Center on American Life, the percentage of American men with no close friends increased from 3% in 1990 to 15% in 2021. And as people age, having nobody to help with everyday needs can become a serious concern.

Geriatrician Maria Carney calls older adults without available caregivers “elder orphans.” Her research estimates that nearly a quarter of Americans over 65 either lack someone to help them or are at risk of ending up in that situation.

There is some good news, though. Rutgers sociologist Jocelyn Elise Crowley found that fathers can reconnect with their adult children, even after years apart. Of course, that requires effort. If you’ve spent decades expecting someone else to maintain your family relationships, you might have to be the one who finally picks up the phone.

The post Why Some Divorced Men End Up Alone in Old Age, According to Science appeared first on VICE.

ADHD can be bad enough on its own, and now we get news from a study published in JAMA Network Open by researchers at University College London and the University of Liverpool that a meta-analysis of nearly 16 million people across three continents found that people with ADHD have a 70 percent higher rate of death from all causes across the board…which significantly plummets when they get on medication.

Living with a brain that constantly refuses to fully hold onto ideas and actions is already an exhausting full-time nightmare and can leave people feeling like they don’t have full control over their own lives. And now, on top of that, tracking data across two decades reveals that having ADHD comes with a huge drop in life expectancy.

Suicide risk rockets by 90 percent, while injury-related fatalities jump by 55 percent. Even boring old dying of natural causes creeps up by 27 percent due to the link to physical issues like cardiovascular disease and the kind of erratic health habits you’d expect someone with attention deficit issues to have.

ADHD Is Linked to a 70% Higher Risk of Death, According to a Major New Study

With ADHD, impulse control glitches out, and ordinary situations that most people can tackle as effortlessly as they grieve can sometimes, for the ADHD mind, become dangerous. Think stuff like drifting off behind the wheel or forgetting to take pills that manage a chronic illness. In the United States, our healthcare system is such a tangled mess of unnecessary bureaucracy that it’s quite easy to imagine someone with ADHD giving up and forgetting about filing a claim or even getting on a healthcare plan to begin with.

It sounds quite depressing, that is, until the researchers found that all of that could be mostly eliminated if someone with ADHD remembers to regularly take ADHD medication. Among those diagnosed, participants taking ADHD meds saw their overall mortality risk drop by about 25 percent. The researchers note that this specific metric comes from a smaller subset of three studies, but the overall idea is that getting an accurate ADHD diagnosis and pairing it with the right medication can help you get your taxes done on time.

It will also help you remember to pay your rent, take out the trash, and maybe even finish that romantasy novel you’ve been working on, and may eventually help you live longer

The post Scientists Just Found a Disturbing Link Between ADHD and Early Death appeared first on VICE.

One of America’s best ideas was the National Park system. Ulysses S. Grant gets credit for creating the first national park—Yellowstone—in 1872. Theodore Roosevelt later expanded protected public lands during his time in office, essentially creating the public park system as we know it today.

Now, we have officially opened a new national park, the first in six years. Meet Chiricahua National Park, the nation’s 64th national park. President Trump has officially signed off on upgrading Arizona’s former Chiricahua National Monument into full-fledged National Park status following a decade-long bipartisan fight in Congress.

The U.S. Just Added Its 64th National Park, and It’s Absolutely Stunning

For some stupid reason, my brain wants to pronounce it “chihuahua,” even though that’s not the word. The actual word is pronounced, “cheery-cow-uh.” However you say it, the new national Park is a 12,000-acre “Wonderland of Rocks” near the Mexican border.

Huge volcanic eruptions from 27 million years ago gave it its gorgeous rock formations, which look like a series of pillars scattered throughout the landscape. It’s also packed with biodiversity, hosting a range of wild animals from ocelots to all four North American skunk species.

Now, this pristine, awe-inspiring land will receive the highest level of federal protection possible. You can visit the park during park hours free of charge.

The post America Just Got Its First New National Park in Six Years. Here’s What to Know. appeared first on VICE.

E-bike rental company Lime has had enough. They’re sick of it. They’re not taking it anymore. They’re being loud and clear in their warning: their bikes are not to be used for jousting, under any circumstances, you hear? No! Not even if you need to slay a real dragon that’s for some reason within the vicinity of a real lance and a Lime e-bike rental. But more specifically and realistically, you should not use the bikes at any e-bike jousting tournament held in London.

According to reports from the BBC, the warning comes after footage blew up online showing artist Jack Carden and actor “Camtholomew the First” throwing a medieval jousting tournament; just instead of horses and knights, it’s rental bikes and regular dudes.

The dudes, dressed head to toe in suits of armor and chainmail, pedal as hard as they can on lime e-bikes through London Fields, Hackney, in East London, raising their lances, charging at one another as hundreds of spectators chanted “joust, joust, joust!”

Footage of the event racked up millions of views on Instagram, and Carden framed it all as “performance art,” which, if we’re being honest, is just a bit of highfalutin speak trying to dress up what is clearly a collection of guys being dudes as they demonstrate one of the many non-toxic ways dudes rock.

A Viral E-Bike Jousting Tournament Has Forced Lime to Issue a Very Strange Warning

Executives at Lime did not see it that way, probably because their minds were instantly filled with all of the lawsuits they could probably be privy to should something go wrong, even though their e-bikes were not intended to be joust’ed upon. Or because they don’t want this to become a thing and suddenly their bikes are being wrecked by dudes slamming them into each other across the world.

Whatever the reason, company higher-ups felt inclined to release an official statement reminding everyone that their fleet of mental e- bikes is meant for pleasant and convenient urban commuting and not medieval violence.

In the statement, the company says that it appreciates the “medieval spirit, safety must always come first,” which is why they remind everyone involved that anyone might want to do their own e- bike jousting tournament and that Lime bikes “are not for jousting.”

I guess it ultimately is a good thing they came out against it. They could have stood idly by and raked in all that jousting rental money as people collided into one another over and over again. That would have been evil, but it’s hard to deny it would’ve been lucrative.

The post People Are Jousting on Rental E-Bikes in London, and Lime Is Not Happy appeared first on VICE.

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A hotel room with unexplained noises, strange figures at the foot of the bed, and a history of violent deaths sounds like a nightmare. Unless you’re specifically looking for that kind of thing.

A new analysis from ACE.com, a free-to-play social gaming site, looked at more than 90,000 TripAdvisor reviews across 34 U.S. hotels to find out which ones had the most ghost-related chatter. Researchers searched for eight terms, including “ghost,” “haunting,” and “spooky,” then calculated how many appeared per 100 reviews. Since a single review could contain multiple terms, scores could exceed 100.

And people are definitely interested. “There are an average of over 11,000 Google searches for ‘haunted hotels’ every month in the US, with searches rising by 98% in October in the run-up to Halloween,” an ACE.com spokesperson said.

Here are the five hotels that received the most paranormal mentions.

1. The Haunted Shanley Hotel, Napanoch, New York

With a name like that, paranormal seekers would be pretty bummed if nothing strange happened. The Shanley topped the list with 120 paranormal mentions per 100 reviews, making it the only property to reach triple digits. Local stories claim children connected to the hotel’s former owners still haunt the building. Despite its reputation, guests gave it a respectable 4.5 Tripadvisor rating.

2. Jefferson Palace Hotel, Jefferson, Texas

The Jefferson Palace Hotel earned 65 paranormal mentions per 100 reviews, with guests describing everything from footsteps in empty hallways to unexplained cold spots. There’s also a room full of dolls you can sleep in, if you want to take the creepy factor up a notch. The hotel has a 3.6 Tripadvisor rating.

3. The Historic Lizzie Borden House, Fall River, Massachusetts

In 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally murdered inside this house, and the infamous Lizzie Borden was later acquitted of the crime. Now a bed and breakfast, guests report strange sensations, including dizziness and the feeling that someone is watching them. It earned 61 paranormal mentions per 100 reviews and a 4.7 TripAdvisor rating.

4. The Stanley Hotel, Estes Park, Colorado

A 1974 stay at the Stanley helped give Stephen King the idea for The Shining, and the hotel has been enjoying its creepy reputation ever since. Guests still report strange experiences, giving the property 43 paranormal mentions per 100 reviews. It also has a 3.6 Tripadvisor rating, so the actual accommodations are questionable.

5. 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa, Eureka Springs, Arkansas

The Crescent has quite the disturbing history. In the 1930s, a con man named Norman Baker turned the hotel into a cancer hospital despite having no medical training. He charged desperate patients for bogus treatments, and many died there. The building even had a morgue in its basement, where guests now report ghostly encounters. The hotel earned 38 paranormal mentions per 100 reviews and a 4.2 rating.

Savannah’s Kehoe House earned a 4.9 Tripadvisor rating, the highest in the study, without making the paranormal top five. Although if you’ve ever spent time in Savannah, you know the city isn’t exactly short on ghost stories. It is the “most haunted city in America,” after all. 

The post The 5 Most Haunted Hotels in America, According to People Who Actually Stayed There appeared first on VICE.

Trading cards are hot right now. Both content creators who have found wildly creative ways to open card packs in hopes of unwrapping a rare card and thieves who have turned to fairly uncomplicated but still daring Pokémon card heists.

We’ve covered several of them. My favorite is the guy who scaled a six-story building in Japan to steal $9,120 worth of Pokémon cards, which could be several cards or could just be one rare, high-graded Charizard.

Well, it happened again. And this one was big, though not strictly Pokémon cards: a FedEx truck carrying two pallets full of graded collectibles, including Pokémon cards, collectively valued at nearly $1 million, was stolen in Santa Ana, California.

Pokémon Cards, Rare Sports Memorabilia Stolen in Nearly $1 Million California Heist

According to NBC News, officers responded to Professional Sports Authenticator after two pallets of graded collectibles were stolen. The stolen merchandise includes Pokémon cards, sports cards, and a 2024 One Piece set—all swiped from a FedEx delivery truck, leaving a third pallet “disrupted.” Initial damages totaled $963,000, though police warn that number could climb once they tally the full inventory.

Many of the memorabilia were already owned by private collectors, some of whom have taken to social media to reveal that some of their cards were part of the theft. Card collector and pack-ripper SKY-B announced on his YouTube channel that 104 of his cards were a part of the theft, and as a result, he will be “absolutely financially destroyed.”

The heist has left collectors completely destroyed. Social media collector “Sky-B” revealed he lost 104 rare cards worth $156,000 that were heading back to Michigan after he dropped $8,000 just to get them graded. Other stolen grails included a 1995 Upper Deck gold Michael Jordan card. Collector Nick Andrews, better known online as Boston card Hunter, said that he had 383, potentially more, cards stolen in the heist, one of which was a rare Michael Jordan card from 1995.

Much of the stolen memorabilia is specific and graded, and likely has some kind of serial number attached, meaning some of it will have to be fenced on the black market. This kind of stuff can get traced pretty quickly if sold to a legit hobby store.

The post Nearly $1 Million in Pokémon and Sports Cards Stolen From FedEx Truck in California appeared first on VICE.

The world has changed. Everything we know is backwards now that women are getting arrested for traditionally male crimes.

According to local reporting from ABC4 Utah, 44-year-old Christine Chao of Rosemead, California, has been charged with automobile homicide while allegedly using a handheld device to watch porn, causing a fatal three-car wreck on Interstate 15 in Juab County, Utah.

Construction slowed traffic near Levan. Chao, driving a blue SUV, allegedly failed to hit the brakes, slamming directly into the back of a white sedan, shoving it into a black SUV. The impact forced all three vehicles off the highway. The passenger in the white sedan suffered a severe head injury and died at the scene despite a medical helicopter landing to deliver emergency care.

Woman Accused of Watching Porn While Driving, Causing Fatal Three-Car Crash

When Utah Highway Patrol troopers investigated the crash site, they noticed something was missing: brake marks on the asphalt that would’ve suggested that Chao hit the brakes. No marks meant she plowed straight into the white sedan at full speed. She admitted it to first responders, prompting investigators to check her phone.

A search warrant that pried open her phone records showed that she was actively browsing a porn video site less than two minutes before the crash. Chao is now facing a second-degree felony charge.

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Due to a series of unforced errors on the part of certain leaders in the federal government, gas prices have gone absolutely bonkers. Where about a year and a half ago I was paying around $2.90 a gallon in my neck of the woods, last night I paid $4.50 a gallon to fill up. It’s madness. If you see anything sub four dollars, it feels like you’re having a hallucination. Now imagine what it must have been like for folks at one Georgia intersection who saw gas at 97 cents a gallon.

According to reports from WJCL-22, a grudge match erupted on Marietta Street in Powder Springs between rival Amoco and Sunoco gas stations. Amoco management followed a strict policy of keeping its fuel five cents cheaper than the competition. Sunoco matched every price cut.

Drivers Went Wild After a Gas Station Price War Sent Prices Below $1

What followed was a petty race to the bottom that represents the true promise of American capitalism, the one that never quite came to fruition. People formed huge lines at both stations as prices went from $2.54 to $1.44 to $1.39 to eventually below a dollar, bottoming out at $0.97 per gallon. For context, Georgia state average gas price is somewhere at $3.77, while the national average, according to AAA at the time of writing, is $4.27 a gallon.

Word quickly spread, and people from all around made the trek to the rival stations. One truck driver interviewed said he normally drops $90 to fill his tank, but drove off having spent only $15.

The frenzy was so wild, both stations were so crammed with cars, that local cops had to step in and block access to the pumps to let the congestion clear. Once things died down a bit, motorists who lingered around the area came rushing back to grab gas at $1.14 a gallon. Both stations eventually ended their weird price-dropping standoff and eventually reverted to normal prices the next day.

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We all need a place to ourselves where we can just let it all out. Usually, that means venting deep-seated emotional baggage, but let’s be honest: some of us just need a designated safe zone to unleash our horrid, rancid farts.

A woman who owns a hotel in Shanklin on the Isle of Wight, England, is providing just such a sanctuary, where those of us who are prone to wild fits of gastrointestinal distress can freely express ourselves. According to the Isle of Wight County Press, the Fig Tree Hotel hosted a sanctuary called “The Art of Letting Go,” tailored specifically for those cursed with the winds. From October 1 to the 5^th, the retreat invited guests to stop forcing silence upon their gastrointestinal systems and to instead release the screams within.

The event was co-facilitated by yoga therapist and energy psychologist Marion Bevington, an IBS sufferer who literally wrote the book on flatulence, a book called Afraid to Fart – And the art of following through, featuring what appears to be an AI cover of a sheep and wool clothing among angry wolves who, given the book’s subject matter, are likely more angry at the sheep for farting than they are for its devious infiltration of the pack.

People Actually Paid to Attend a Wellness Retreat Where Farting Was Encouraged

When attracting such flatulent customers, one would wonder if exhibiting that flatulence would get one booted off the premises. Bevington assured attendees that nobody would be kicked out, blacklisted, or face any consequences for stinking up the joint.

Ultimately, the core philosophy is to get over the shame of flatulence and know how to gracefully excuse yourself from a social situation when you’re about to drop a big one. A valuable lesson we should all be so privileged to learn.

Yes, the event is long over by now, but maybe the viral spread of this story will encourage Bevington and the gang to make the Fart Retreat a regular thing and possibly become the fart hotspot of the world.

The post This Hotel Hosted a Five-Day Retreat Dedicated Entirely to Farting appeared first on VICE.

Earth’s core is leaking, and it has been for a long time.

Earth’s core, frankly, sounds insane. It’s a molten ball covered in a lava ocean that spews lethal gases and occasionally ejects some of itself through volcanoes. It used to be so wild that the planet was uninhabitable, but it eventually settled down enough for humans to exist on it.

According to a study in Science Advances by researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China, that core is constantly oozing chemical leftovers from the birth of our Solar System. For years, scientists have debated whether these weird deep-Earth ingredients get trapped in the mantle when the planet first cooled, or whether Earth’s core is slowly leaking material into the outer layers.

The Center of Earth Is Leaking Ancient Material, and Scientists Are Trying to Understand Why

To figure it out, scientists used computer simulations to model how hydrogen moves. Like sodas or cigarettes, hydrogen comes in a “light” version and a “heavy” version. The heavy one is called deuterium. If early Earth froze, the heavy and light versions would be mixed pretty evenly everywhere. But when scientists look at lava from volcanic hotspots in Iceland and Baffin Island, they find way more of the superlight version of hydrogen.

This means that the original cooling process couldn’t have caused this current setup. Instead, light hydrogen trapped in the planet’s metal core billions of years ago, when the Sun was forming, is actively leaking into the mantle like air from a punctured tire.

This light hydrogen, along with ancient helium and tungsten, rides hot lava streams to the planet’s surface, meaning that for the past several billion years ancient gases trapped in Earth’s core have been slowly burping their way out.

The post Scientists Just Discovered That Earth’s Core Is Leaking, and It Has Been for Billions of Years appeared first on VICE.

Other than having a living plesiosaur in front of you, you probably won’t get much closer to the creature than by finding some of its bones, but maybe some of its bodily excretions would help you learn what was going on in its now-missing digestive tract. But how do you even come across the, let’s say, puke of a creature that’s been dead for tens of millions of years?

According to new research published in Geological Magazine by geologist Dirk Knaust, oil crews drilling off the Norwegian coast accidentally hauled up 160-million-year-old plesiosaur puke from deep underwater rock cores dating to the Jurassic period.

Samples range from walnut-sized to mango-sized, just in case you never want to look at those foods in the same way again.

160-Million-Year-Old Vomit Could Reveal How Prehistoric Sea Monsters Ate

Plesiosaurs were long-necked aquatic sea monsters that measured 13 to 26 feet long and looked almost exactly like you’d imagine the Loch Ness monster. When the researchers found the fossilized vomit, I didn’t immediately assume it belonged to a Jurassic creature. It could’ve been fossilized poop or maybe storm debris. Maybe it belonged to a fish or squid? But no, because they can’t cough up chunks this big.

If it was a prehistoric shark or a crocodile, they probably would’ve found some fish in there. With all other possibilities ruled out, Cryptoclididae plesiosaurs were the last possibility remaining.

These massive reptiles moved along the deep seafloor using their long necks like vacuum cleaners to scoop up bottom-dwelling invertebrates. Their teeth weren’t strong enough to grind shells, so their stomachs compacted the indigestible stuff into gross pellets they later vomited up.

But what I find most interesting is that plesiosaurs didn’t just puke wherever they swam. Scientists found the items they barfed up in what used to be shallow ancient river deltas. So, like fur seals or marine crocodiles after a big meal, these ancient aquatic beasts probably swam into safe coastal waters to chill out for a bit, eventually puking their meals into the mud before napping and heading back out to sea.

Now that’s livin’.

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In 1873, an Argentine sailor named Luis Piedra Buena loaded a crew onto a ship called the Espora and headed toward the Strait of Le Maire, a rough stretch of ocean near Patagonia known for tearing hulls to smithereens. He risked his crew’s lives for the noble quest of murdering a bunch of penguins to harvest their grease for oil.

Somewhere along the way, the ship wrecked near Isla de los Estados. Piedra Buena and his crew suddenly became castaways, struggling to survive on unfamiliar shores. The Penguins, having no idea they came this close to being scooped up and turned into lamp oil or whatever, still don’t care about humanity’s plight.

Eventually, the crew slapped together a makeshift sailboat and made it to Chile. The penguins kept on doing their thing.

Archaeologists May Have Found the Lost Shipwreck of 19th-Century Penguin Hunters

Now, according to a study published in the journal Antiquity and reported by IFLScience, archaeologists searching around Franklin Bay have uncovered the ruined wooden ribs of a 19th-century ship, along with a crude castaway camp on a nearby hillside.

The researchers dug up salvaged ship parts, including whole timbers and a deck prism, and found a smattering of distinctly human clutter—glass bottles, buttons, beads, and tools. While this belongs to Piedra Buena and his crew, the most logical explanation, the researchers aren’t claiming that just yet, just to be safe.

There’s more testing to be done, but it’s hard to deny that the location and all the artifacts combined heavily suggest that there may have been a bunch of stranded penguin hunters who may have ripped their ship to shreds to fashion it into an improvised boat that could possibly, maybe, get them to Chile.

Hypothetically.

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“The other day” is one of those phrases everyone uses and no one’s ever defined. To some people, it means yesterday. To others, it covers most of the Obama years.

And people actually have strong opinions about this. In an r/AskUK discussion, one person insisted a week was the absolute limit, arguing that “two months ago is not the other day; that is just poor calendar management.” Another figured it could mean anything from yesterday to sometime in the last decade.

One commenter said their dad uses it for events that happened “anywhere between last Tuesday and 1994.” Which feels very “dad.”

The Internet Can’t Agree on What ‘The Other Day’ Means

Dr. Luke Jones, who studies how people perceive time at the University of Manchester, told Metro that we’re “not very good at remembering exactly when things happened.” Especially the boring stuff. Most of us can barely remember what we had for lunch a few days ago, let alone when we last went grocery shopping or made a phone call. That’s where “the other day” comes in.

There’s also a psychological explanation for why something from years ago can feel surprisingly recent. It’s called the telescoping effect, and it describes how we misremember when events happened. Older memories can seem much closer than they are, explaining how someone can swear they went to a certain restaurant “the other day” only to discover it closed in 2019.

The opposite can happen with recent memories, too. Human beings are extremely unreliable at remembering dates, which has caused headaches for researchers trying to figure out when people last visited a doctor or bought something.

Age might also have something to do with the increasingly generous definition of “recent.” People commonly report that time seems to pass quicker as they get older, so a few years can feel like a much shorter stretch. Which could explain why your dad still talks about a vacation from 1994 like everyone should remember what happened.

Most of the time, an exact date isn’t necessary anyway. If you’re telling a friend about something weird that happened at the grocery store, “the other day” gets the point across just fine. But when the timing actually matters, therapist Rebecca Mackillop told Metro that asking a follow-up question is a better approach than assuming everyone uses the phrase the same way.

And if someone’s story involves a Blockbuster membership, you have every right to question their view of time.

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Traveling is so much fun, in large part, thanks to the characters you meet on the road. During a recent trip to Fiji, a Russian travel blogger named Olga Bavykina, whom you may also call Zabotkina, encountered one adorably enthusiastic shop employee, whom I’m sure she won’t forget. She aptly captioned her video of him, «Когда очень гордишься наследием предков», or “When you are really proud of your ancestors”…

The charismatic man indeed embodies healthy pride, as he shows off the kinds of tools his ancestors used for cannibalistic purposes — unique souvenirs to bring back to your loved ones. Our informative friend exclaims, “We eat people for the power.” I want to know more about his people’s current practices, as even without having consumed human flesh himself, he still exudes more charisma than your average protein-shake-clutching, yoga-mat-lugging American health nut.

Fijian Shopkeeper Goes Viral for Showing Tourists His Ancestors’ Cannibalism Tools

Our cultural emissary demonstrates the manner in which a brain might be extracted in order to give to a chief so that he might absorb wisdom, lending new meaning to the term brainiac; warriors become tough from partaking of the muscle, he explains. The taste of victory is sweet, isn’t it? He further clarifies that the ritual of cannibalism was upheld for religious reasons, not to satisfy hunger.

Bavykina roughly penned thus on Telegram:

“He explained that the Fijians didn’t exactly sit around waiting for their enemies to float their way. Instead, about 400 warriors would board each drua and set off to fight the Tongans. The Tongans would meet them in similar vessels. Right there in the sea, they would fight.

The distance between Tonga and Fiji is near 1,000 kilometers.”

Needless to say, it is clear that the man of whom we’ve been speaking is very “metal” and could certainly serve as a conceptual and lyrical advisor to a band or two. Naturally, many of our forebears observed traditions that might not be viewed as acceptable within the rigid moral framework of today, so he causes us all to reflect upon our cultural heritage.

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The idea that women are more emotionally intelligent than men is kind of a no-brainer, unless you’re some kind of weirdo men’s rights/manosphere influencer type guy. You don’t really need a scientific study to know this, but a team of researchers conducted one and published their results in the journal Emotion. The results were mostly unsurprising, except that the gap in emotional intelligence between men and women is a bit smaller than you’d imagine.

Analyzing data from 609,278 people across 76 countries, researchers from the University of Limerick and the University of Zurich found that while women score higher overall, the divide is relatively small. The real difference is in whose feelings they manage. Women far outpace men in reading, understanding, and regulating other people’s emotions. When it comes to managing their own emotional baggage, men scored higher, but only slightly.

Scientists Studied 600,000 People to Find Out Who Has Higher Emotional Intelligence

The study’s funniest detail is best summed up by one of the lead researchers, Jochen Menges: “Women are emotionally intelligent. Men think they are.” The team gleaned this insight from testing: on performance-based tests, women had a clear advantage, while on self-reported tests, men way overestimated their abilities and women underestimated their own.

Researchers suggest that the gap isn’t hardwired into our biology. It narrows in younger generations, suggesting it’s learned through social practice; since girls are taught to handle everyone else’s feelings, they eventually become women saddled with heaps of unpaid emotional labor at work and at home. Men, meanwhile, get to coast on a ton of unearned confidence while staying blind, and frankly probably completely indifferent, to their own emotional shortcomings.

Typical.

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If you’re into spirituality at all, you might have heard the term “mystic” thrown around from time to time. These individuals are believed to have a direct connection to the divine, be it God, source, the universe, or whatever higher power you believe in.

“A mystic is someone who has lived experience with the divine,” says Bridget Marie, an Intuitive coach specializing in Astrology and Tarot. “Deeply spiritual and intuitive, mystics are old souls who are attuned to the unseen.”

Wondering whether you’re one of the gifted individuals on this earth? (I have an inkling we all are, to an extent.) In honor of the autumn season—the time of year when the veil between the physical world and the spirit realm begins to thin—here are five signs you might be a mystic.

1. You Notice Signs

According to Marie, if you regularly spot signs from above, you might be a mystic.

“For example, you might notice white feathers on your path, a sign from your higher self that you are protected,” she says. 

Many people also notice repetitive angel numbers, symbols in their dreams, or even highly requested signs they’ve prayed for come to fruition right in front of them. These little “winks” from the universe might indicate your connection to the divine.

2. You Feel Divinely Protected

According to Marie, mystics are believed to be divinely protected. If you sense someone is watching over you, be it a higher power or ancestor, you might be a mystic. 

“For example, something might happen that, from the outside, looks like bad luck but ends up for your highest good,” she explains.

Have you noticed that any time someone does you wrong, your life ends up getting exponentially better while theirs seems to spiral out of control? Or maybe you’ve been saved from what could have been a life-or-death situation. This is a clear sign you’re being protected and guided.

3. Your Intuition Is Sharp

A strong intuition is one of the most obvious signs of a mystic. For some, this means intuitively reading symbols, like the ones on tarot cards or the astrological glyphs, Marie says. For others, it might simply be having a sense of knowing without even understanding why.

“You know things without knowing how, whether it is a bad feeling about someone who turns out to not have your best interests at heart or prophetic dreams,” Marie says.

4. You’re Empathetic

Empathy is one of the most beautiful qualities to possess. Mystics can usually use their sensitivity to tap into empathy, deepening their connections to other living beings and the world around them.

According to Marie, you might be a mystic if “you are highly empathetic, and animals and children love being close to you.” 

5. You Crave Solitude

Because mystics are sensitive to energy and tend to carry heavy emotions and truths, they often need space to process. Usually, this occurs within nature.

“[Mystics] regularly need alone time and like to spend time in nature to recharge [their] batteries,” says Marie.

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