fact
Walking the aisles of your local supermarket may feel like a pretty mundane task. But 100 years ago, it was downright revolutionary. This is how Piggly Wiggly changed how we grocery shop.
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Some female capuchin monkeys have been known to flirt with males by throwing rocks at them.
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When it comes to food, ignorance is sometimes bliss. Take gummy candies, for example. You likely know they’re made with gelatin—a colorless, tasteless protein that’s used as a thickening agent. But did you know that gelatin is extracted by boiling animal skin, tendons, ligaments, and bones with water?
In an episode of Flemish public broadcaster VRT’s Over Eten (On Food), Belgian filmmaker Alina Kneepkens explores how the chewable treats are manufactured, step-by-step. According to Eater, the short film is part of a series examining how various foods and ingredients—including sugar, black pudding, lamb burgers, and more—make their way from farm and/or factory to grocery store shelves.
Origin videos aren’t exactly a new concept, but Kneepkens adds an interesting twist: She films the assembly process in reverse, presenting viewers with familiar foods before revealing how they’re made and what ingredients are used. Watch the video above, and be prepared to be surprised by how gross gummy bears can get.
[h/t Distractify]
Banner image: iStock.
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September 7, 2016 – 5:00pm
Women tend to be paid less than men in most major occupations, but the causes behind this troubling trend aren’t always easy to identify. One popular explanation is that women make less money simply because they aren’t asking for more. New research pokes a hole in that theory: According to a paper published by researchers from Cass Business School, the University of Warwick, and the University of Wisconsin [PDF], women ask for raises just as often as men but are less likely to receive them, Broadly reports.
For the study, researchers looked at data from 4600 workers under 840 employers gathered in the Australian Workplace Relations Survey from 2013 to 2014. Australia’s survey is unique in that it asks employees if their pay is negotiable, whether or not they have asked for a raise and received it, and what their feelings are about asking for more pay.
The raw data showed that male workers were 9 percent more likely to request a wage increase than women. But, when factors like amount of hours worked, qualification levels, and the nature of the job were adjusted for, there was no significant difference between the rates of men and women asking for more money.
Something that did differ between the two groups was the likelihood of actually receiving a raise. Even with all the complicating variables taken into account, men still had a 25 percent greater chance of receiving a pay boost when they asked for one. Furthermore, of the workers who didn’t attempt to negotiate at all, only 12.9 percent of women said they chose not to out of “concern for their relationships in the workplace” compared to 14.6 percent of men. This challenges the notion that women are more hesitant to ask for money because they fear how it might reflect on them.
Pay discrimination is an obstacle facing many women in the workforce, but fortunately more lawmakers are starting to make an effort to close the wage gap. In August, Massachusetts became the 13th state to make it illegal for employers to stop workers from discussing their salaries. That same bill also made Massachusetts the first state to ban employers from inquiring about salary history during an interview, and now Congress is about to consider similar legislation that would make the practice illegal nationwide. Laws like these won’t close the gap on their own, but they can help put women in a position to receive the pay they deserve—whether or not they ask for it.
[h/t Broadly]
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September 7, 2016 – 2:30am
We could use some extra hands around mentalfloss.com this fall. Writer and producer hands, specifically.
You’ll be writing, researching, and doing web production work for mentalfloss.com. An interest in food and travel writing is a plus! The internship starts ASAP. You’ll be working remotely and, ideally, be available 12 to 15 hours a week. The internship pays $12/hour.
Send us an email with the subject line “Mental Floss Fall 2016 Internship” before 11:59 p.m. EST Friday, September 16, 2016.
In your email, include the following:
1. In one paragraph, tell us about yourself.
2. In another paragraph, tell us why you’d make a great mental_floss intern. If you have CMS experience, let us know!
3. In a third paragraph, tell us when you could start and when you’d be able to work this fall.
4. This is the most important part: Come up with one great story idea for mentalfloss.com, with a brief summary that sells the idea.
5. Attach your resume and up to three links to awesome things you’ve written.
September 7, 2016 – 5:05pm
Many words in the English language that seem remarkably common have a surprising secondary definition known mostly to scientists in different disciplines. Here are 18 words drawn from the American Heritage Science Dictionary that have an alternative meaning in various science disciplines. Some may be familiar, and others less so.
Used in: Ecology
This refers not only the drooling nightmare that terrified Sigourney Weaver but also to non-native creatures and plant species introduced to an area from which they don’t originate.
Used in: Chemistry
When you’ve graduated from an institution of learning, you become an alumni or “alum,” but the word is also the name of any various crystalline double salts of a trivalent metal (such as aluminum, chromium, or iron) or a monovalent metal (such as potassium or sodium). It’s used in industry to harden and purify, and in medicine as an emetic (aka vomit inducer), and to stop bleeding.
Used in: Geography, Astronomy
You may keep your pants up with one of these, but geographers and geologists are more likely thinking of a geographic region that is in some way distinctive from others. Space scientists use this one too (see: Kuiper asteroid belt).
Used in: Medicine
You may have struggled with this branch of mathematics in school, but a doctor will be more concerned with the kind that is a solid mass, usually inorganic material, that forms in a cavity or tissue of the body. Such a calculus is often found in the gall bladder, kidney or urinary bladder—otherwise known as a stone.
Used in: Geology
If you’re involved in a lawsuit, you may have to submit to a deposition, where a legal team asks you questions before you go to trial. For geologists, however, this refers to an accumulation of matter by natural processes, such as sediment in a river or mineral deposits in a bodily organ.
Used in: Biology
You probably grew up in a human one and may be raising one of your own. Taxonomists use the term to mean a group of organisms ranking above a genus and below an order. Family names of plants, fungi, and algae have the suffix -aceae, while animal family names end with –idae.
Used in: Botany
It takes a lot of gall to assume there’s only one meaning to this word, which is actually an abnormal swelling of plant tissue, usually caused by injury or parasite infection. They can appear as balls, knobs, lumps, or warts.
Used in: Medicine
A verbal attack can feel like an insult, but this term is also used for certain assaults and injuries to the body, from a bruise to a tumor. It can be the cause of such an injury as well.
Used in: Programming
Though commonly used to refer to a speech impediment, this is also an acronym for list processing, a programming language for artificial intelligence programming designed in 1959 by John McCarthy. It’s also one of the oldest programming languages still in use today.
Used in: Chemistry
You may know this as an annoying little creature that digs holes in your garden (or a spy within an organization), but to chemists it’s a standard scientific unit for measuring large quantities of tiny molecules or particles.
Used in: Chemistry
The word of choice for negating something is also the abbreviation for the element Nobelium, a synthetic radioactive metallic element produced by bombarding curium with carbon ions. Named after Alfred Nobel, it’s radioactive.
Used in: Physics
Not to be confused with the Sanskrit word often exercised in yoga classes, an ohm is equal to the resistance of a conductor channeling one ampere of flow when a volt is applied to it.
Used in: Engineering, Programming
A torn pair of jeans might require one of these, but it’s also a temporary, removable electronic connection between two components in a communications system, as well as a piece of code that fixes a software bug.
Used in: Physics
This was the equivalent of “cool” (derived from “radical”) in the 1980s, but to physicists, it’s a unit of measuring the energy absorbed by a material that has been exposed to radiation. One rad equals 100 ergs per gram of material.
Used in: Physics
Though you can apply this to sheep to remove them of their wool, it also refers to a force applied to an object at a perpendicular angle, putting greater stress on one side of the axis than the other, as can happen in earthquakes and explosions.
Used in: Programming
Other than the game where one of you is “it” and chases down the others, this is also a term referring to a sequence of characters in a markup language to provide information for formatting specifications about a document. If you use a Mac, you might be familiar with these kinds of tags.
Used in: Mathematics
You might have to pay dues to one of these at work, but it’s also a numerical set whose members belong to at least one of a group of two or more sets. You’ve likely seen a union in a Venn diagram.
Used in: Chemistry
It might make sense that this word, often used to mean cruel or bitter criticism, is how sulfuric acid used to be known. Discovered in the 8th century by an Arab alchemist, vitriol comes from the Latin for “glass,” after its sulfate salts.
September 7, 2016 – 4:00pm
In 1963, at the height of the Cold War, the US military launched a ring of 480million needles into orbit around the earth. It was hoped they would more reliably bounce radio signals back to earth in case the Soviets cut through undersea cables. Multiple clumps of these needles are still up there.
Ancient Roman philosophers sported different styles of beards to distinguish which school of philosophy they belonged to.
In 2012, a Cleveland woman, arrested for a traffic infraction, was ordered to stand for 2 days holding a sign that read “Only an idiot would drive on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus.”