Month: December 2016

You’ve been slaving away at your job—isn’t it about time you get a raise? You’re not alone in feeling like you’re underpaid: According to a 2016 survey by PayScale, only 36 percent of employees feel like they’re fairly compensated, compared to 73 percent of employers who believe their employees are paid the appropriate amount. Clearly there’s an information gap here. This is how you can talk to your boss and snag that raise.

1. DO YOUR HOMEWORK.

It’s essential that you know how much people in your position make at competing organizations, says Andy Decker, regional president at Robert Half, a major staffing agency. To find this information, start by searching job-hunt websites like CareerBuilder, PayScale, or Indeed. You can also reach out to your alma mater about putting you in touch with other alums in your industry, or searching public records.

2. SPEAK WITH YOUR HUMAN RESOURCES DEPARTMENT.

Unless you work in a small private business, your human resources department should have a compensation plan, says Marie McIntyre, author of Secrets to Winning at Office Politics. “Ask human resources how salary is determined,” she says. “Don’t ask them how much someone else makes, but they’ll tell you about pay ranges and scales and how decisions are made.” Once you understand the market value of your job as well as how your company determines your pay, then you’re in a better position to have “the conversation.”

3. ASK YOURSELF “WHY.”

Now you need to prove why you deserve a raise, McIntyre says. Do you deserve it because you’re underpaid? Do you deserve it because you’re a top performer? Because you made a particular contribution to the company? “What’s your rationale for it?” McIntyre asks. “You don’t just get a raise because you’ve been there for six months.”

4. PLAN YOUR STRATEGY.

You want to cater your approach to best suit your boss’s individual style. Is your boss more likely to be swayed by facts and figures? Then you need to go in there with the numbers to support your case. Is he going to respond well if you talk yourself up? Some will be impressed by that, but others will be turned off by it, McIntyre says.

5. CONSIDER YOUR COMPANY’S FINANCIAL POSITION.

Before you march in and request a raise, think about your company’s state of affairs. Did they recently have a round of layoffs? Did they make budget cuts or take away any perks? If there were any signs that the company is having obvious financial problems, then it’s not the best time to request more money, Decker says.

6. MAKE AN APPOINTMENT.

Contrary to popular belief, your raise appeal should not be at the same time as your performance review, McIntyre says. This is because many companies determine budget and salary before the review. Ideally, the salary talk should happen at least a month before you’re due for your review.

It should also be a scheduled visit. Explain to your boss that you’d like to meet with him or her to discuss your current compensation. “If he’s not prepared, he’ll feel like he’s been ambushed, and he may be defensive, which can shoot you in the foot,” Decker says. Since most people are busier at the beginning of the week, Decker recommends scheduling a time to chat on a Thursday afternoon. This way your manager has had a chance to tackle the important issues of the week, but isn’t running out the door to start the weekend.

7. HAVE THE TALK.

This is hands down the scary part. Thirty-two percent of people would rather clean the house than ask for a raise, according to a 2015 survey by Robert Half. But if you’ve followed steps 1 through 6, you’re ready. “Go in there and have an open conversation,” Decker says.

8. BE PREPARED FOR REJECTION.

It happens—but that doesn’t mean you have to walk away empty-handed. According to the Robert Half survey, under a quarter of people who were turned down would ask for other perks, which means that the majority of you are missing out on a great opportunity, McIntyre says. “Consider asking for a bonus,” she says. “Often, companies are much more willing to give bonuses; a pay raise is permanent and would stay in the budget for a long time as opposed to a [one-time] bonus.” Other options include requesting flex time, a title change, or extra vacation days.

If you’re given a firm “no,” ask what you need to do to move to the next pay step. Or, if the reason for your rejection is just that there’s no room in the budget for an increase, ask when a better time would be and make it known that you’d like to revisit the question then.

When Victor Collins was found dead in a friend’s hot tub in Bentonville, Arkansas last November, there were few bystanders on the scene—other than his friend and accused killer, James Andrew Bates. But prosecutors are insisting there was another witness that night with potentially valuable information: an Amazon Echo.

According to ABC News, the Benton County prosecution has requested “audio recordings, transcribed records, text records, and other data” from an Echo smart speaker belonging to Bates with the hope that it will provide clues to Collins’s death. Collins died of apparent strangulation and drowning on November 22, 2015 at Bates’s home, after the pair spent the evening watching football and drinking with two other friends.

Benton County prosecutor Nathan Smith isn’t sure what—if anything—they might find on the Echo, an internet-connected speaker that listens for user voice commands and speaks back as the AI assistant “Alexa.” He simply sees it as “a question of law enforcement doing their due diligence.” But for Amazon and its users, that question is not so simple.

While Amazon has provided Bates’s basic account information, the company has not released the Echo data. For the tech giant, it’s a matter of protecting its customers’ privacy. Amazon spokeswoman Kinley Pearsall said in a statement that the company “will not release customer information without a valid and binding legal demand” and maintained that Amazon rejects “overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course.”

Privacy advocates like Nuala O’Connor, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, are similarly concerned about what this case could mean for evidence rules regarding internet-connected home devices moving forward. She worries that if this case sets a precedent, police could build a circumstantial character sketch from a suspect’s smart thermostat or light dimmer. But for now, legal and privacy experts will have to wait until March 17, when Bates is scheduled for his next court hearing.

[h/t ABC News]

Between his modest comic book hits Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army, imaginative Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro made a film that was darker and more in Spanish: Pan’s Labyrinth, a horror-tinged fairy tale set in 1944 Spain, under fascist rule. Like many of del Toro’s films, it’s a political allegory as well as a gothic fantasy. The heady mix of whimsy and violence wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it won enough fans to make $83.25 million worldwide and receive six Oscar nominations (it won three). On the tenth anniversary of the film’s release, here are some details to help you separate fantasy from reality the next time you take a walk in El Laberinto del Fauno.

1. IT’S A COMPANION PIECE TO THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE.

Del Toro intended Pan’s Labyrinth to be a thematic complement to The Devil’s Backbone, his 2001 film set in Spain in 1939. The movies have a lot of similarities in their structure and setup, but del Toro says on the Pan’s Labyrinth DVD commentary that the events of September 11, 2001—which occurred five months after The Devil’s Backbone opened in Spain, and two months before it opened in the U.S.—changed his perspective. “The world changed,” del Toro said. “Everything I had to say about brutality and innocence changed.”

2. IT HAS A CHARLES DICKENS REFERENCE.

When Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) arrives at Captain Vidal’s house, goes to shake his hand, and is gruffly told, “It’s the other hand,” that’s a near-quotation from Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, when the young lad of the title meets his mother’s soon-to-be-husband. Davey’s stepfather turns out to be a cruel man, too, just like Captain Vidal (Sergi López).

3. DUE TO A DROUGHT, THERE ARE VERY FEW ACTUAL FLAMES OR SPARKS IN THE MOVIE.

The region of Segovia, Spain was experiencing its worst drought in 30 years when del Toro filmed his movie there, so his team had to get creative. For the shootout in the forest about 70 minutes into the movie, they put fake moss on everything to hide the brownness, and didn’t use squibs (explosive blood packs) or gunfire because of the increased fire risk. In fact del Toro said that, except for the exploding truck in another scene, the film uses almost no real flames, sparks, or fires. Those elements were added digitally in post-production.

4. IT CEMENTED DEL TORO’S HATRED OF HORSES.

The director is fond of all manner of strange, terrifying monsters, but real live horses? He hates ’em. “They are absolutely nasty motherf*ckers,” he says on the DVD commentary. His antipathy toward our equine friends predated Pan’s Labyrinth, but the particular horses he worked with here—ill-tempered and difficult, apparently—intensified those feelings. “I never liked horses,” he says, “but after this, I hate them.”

5. THE FAUN’S IMAGE IS INCORPORATED INTO THE ARCHITECTURE.

If you look closely at the banister in the Captain’s mansion, you’ll see the Faun’s head in the design. It’s a subtle reinforcement of the idea that the fantasy world is bleeding into the real one.

6. IT MADE STEPHEN KING SQUIRM.

Del Toro reports that he had the pleasure of sitting next to the esteemed horror novelist at a screening in New England, and that King squirmed mightily during the Pale Man scene. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life,” del Toro said.

7. IT REFLECTS DEL TORO’S NEGATIVE FEELINGS TOWARD THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

Del Toro told an interviewer that he was appalled by the Catholic church’s complicity with fascism during the Spanish Civil War. He said the priest’s comment at the banquet table, regarding the dead rebels—”God has already saved their souls; what happens to their bodies, well, it hardly matters to him”—was taken from a real speech that a priest used to give to rebel prisoners in the fascist camps. Furthermore, “the Pale Man represents the church for me,” Del Toro said. “He represents fascism and the church eating the children when they have a perversely abundant banquet in front of them.”

8. THERE’S A CORRECT ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF WHETHER IT’S REAL OR ALL IN OFELIA’S HEAD.

Del Toro has reiterated many times that while a story can mean different things to different people, “objectively, the way I structured it, there are clues that tell you … that it’s real.” Specifically: the flower blooming on the dead tree at the end; the chalk ending up on Vidal’s desk (as there’s no way it could have gotten there); and Ofelia’s escape through a dead end of the labyrinth.

9. THE PLOT WAS ORIGINALLY EVEN DARKER.

In del Toro’s first conception of the story, it was about a married pregnant woman who meets the Faun in the labyrinth, falls in love with him, and lets him sacrifice her baby on faith that she, the baby, and the Faun will all be together in the afterlife and the labyrinth will thrive again. “It was a shocking tale,” Del Toro said.

10. THE SHAPES AND COLORS ARE THEMATICALLY RELEVANT.

Del Toro points out in the DVD commentary that scenes with Ofelia tend to have circles and curves and use warm colors, while scenes with Vidal and the war have more straight lines and use cold colors. Over the course of the film, the two opposites gradually intrude on one another.

11. THAT VICIOUS BOTTLE ATTACK COMES FROM AN INCIDENT IN DEL TORO’S LIFE.

Del Toro and a friend were once in a fight during which his friend was beaten in the face with a bottle, and the detail that stuck in the director’s memory was that the bottle didn’t break. That scene is also based on a real occurrence in Spain, when a fascist smashed a citizen’s face with the butt of a pistol and took his groceries, all because the man didn’t take off his hat.

12. DOUG JONES LEARNED SPANISH TO PLAY THE FAUN.

The Indiana-born actor, best known for working under heavy prosthetics and makeup, had worked with del Toro on Hellboy and Mimic and was the director’s first choice to play the Faun and the Pale Man. The only problem: Jones didn’t speak Spanish. Del Toro said they could dub his voice, but Jones wanted to give a full performance. Then del Toro said he could learn his Spanish lines phonetically, but Jones thought that would be harder to memorize than the actual words. Fortunately, he had five hours in the makeup chair every day, giving him plenty of time to practice. And then? Turns out it still wasn’t good enough. Del Toro replaced Jones’s voice with that of a Spanish theater actor, who was able to make his delivery match Jones’s facial expressions and lip movements.

13. NEVER MIND THE (ENGLISH) TITLE, THAT ISN’T PAN.

The faun is a mythological creature, half man and half goat, who represents nature (it’s where the word “fauna” comes from) and is neutral toward humans. Pan is a specific Greek god, also goat-like, who’s generally depicted as mischievous, harmful, and overly sexual—not a creature you’d be comfortable seeing earn the trust of a little girl. In Spanish, the film is called El Laberinto del Fauno, which translates to The Faun’s Labyrinth. “Pan” was used for English-speaking audiences because that figure is more familiar than the faun, but you’ll notice he’s never called Pan in the film itself. “If he was Pan, the girl would be in deep sh*t,” del Toro told one interviewer.

14. DEL TORO WROTE THE ENGLISH SUBTITLES HIMSELF.

After being disappointed by the way the translators handled The Devil’s Backbone (“subtitles for the thinking impaired”), the Mexican filmmaker, who speaks fluent English, did the job himself for Pan’s Labyrinth. “I took about a month with a friend and an assistant working on them, measuring them, so that it doesn’t feel like you’re watching a subtitled film,” he said.

Additional Sources:
DVD features and commentary

Water has long been the limiting factor for humans in space. But now, NASA is developing a rover that can make water on the Moon. Such a capability will be necessary for any serious attempt at the permanent settlement of Mars, or any other long-term space voyage. If successful, it will inaugurate a new, critical area in space exploration, where resources from other worlds can be harnessed and used.

Presently, everything we use in space is made on Earth. Consider the big, visible parts of human exploration of the solar system, rockets like the Space Launch System (SLS), under construction and set for its maiden voyage in 2018. There’s also the Orion capsule, tested previously and set to fly atop SLS (without astronauts). Then there’s work on habitats: Scientists are currently working on manufacturing artificial habitats for the International Space Station, but soon will be working on one for the Martian surface. A huge part of this kind of pioneering the solar system, however, concerns not just what we bring to other worlds, but what we leave behind. The Lunar Resource Prospector is the first big step in striking that balance.

IN-SITU RESOURCE UTILIZATION

The real problem of colonization is mass. It’s very expensive to send something to space, and the heavier it is, the more it costs. It takes hundreds of kilograms on the launch pad to put a single kilogram on the surface of Mars, and Martian settlers will need many, many metric tons of commodities to survive. Practically speaking, they can’t take everything they will need from Earth. To colonize the solar system, they will have to learn how to use the resources of the solar system.

The good news is that everything in the solar system is a potential resource for settlers. In-situ resource utilization, or ISRU, is the concept of mining resources on other worlds and turning them into useful commodities, as well as recycling waste created on other worlds. (Waste conversion solves two problems: It creates new useful things and eliminates garbage. The ISS dumps its garbage, allowing it to burn up in the atmosphere. But surface dwellers on Mars won’t have such a convenient disposal service.)

Energy is an important part of ISRU, and from a settlement perspective, energy is very cheap. The Sun is a giant fusion reactor in the sky, after all, and to harness it, all pioneers need are a few solar panels that they bring from home. Those panels will provide energy for a very long time—energy that can be used for ISRU.

Mars is the most likely current spot for future human settlement, so consider what resources might be available there: Settlers could extract oxygen from Mars’s soil, known as regolith. Water could be extracted from volatiles in the soil, essentially baking them off. There is also carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere. Combine carbon with electrolyzed water and settlers can make methane, which could be used as fuel.

Settlers won’t need to take building material to Mars; they could easily glue soil together and make bricks. Metals could also be extracted from Martian regolith to build things. Because Mars is rich with carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, settlers could even make plastic. What would they build first? Probably greenhouses, for starters. Growing crops for food will also be useful for water purification and oxygen generation.

For ISRU to be most effective, planning will begin long before humans leave Earth. NASA’s provisional plans see ISRU projects beginning 480 days before astronauts launch. Machines already on Mars will be put to work before settlers even arrive, extracting resources and storing them cryogenically. Water will need to be waiting for humans to drink. Oxygen and inert gasses would need to be ready for instant use in a habitat. An ascent vehicle would be fueled with methane propellant and ready from day one in the event of an emergency.

Even the propellant to get to Mars in the first place could be extracted off-world. The moon’s equatorial region yields an abundance of oxygen, and its poles an abundance of water. Engineers could harness that to make rocket propellant, which would be much cheaper to bring from the Moon than launching it from Earth.

ISRU is an obvious approach to exploration and settlement, but so far, it’s been theoretical: No one has ever tried this on a planetary scale. When we go to Mars, it won’t be for a casual visit, it will be for pioneering. The long-term goal is independence from Earth.

LUNAR RESOURCE PROSPECTOR

One of the first serious ISRU proposals is the Lunar Resource Prospector. The project is in early development and will be NASA’s first soft landing on the Moon since the 1970s. The spacecraft is a small rover, and as its name suggests, it will prospect the lunar surface, studying its composition with an emphasis on finding water.

Scientists will choose its landing site carefully. Potential sites must be in sunlight, as the spacecraft is solar powered, and it must have a direct line of sight for communications with the Earth. (It does not presently use orbital assets as relays.) The terrain must be traversable, and data collected by such spacecraft as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will have to suggest where there is hydrogen present in the subsurface, and where subsurface temperatures support the presence of water. Moreover, the landing site must be close to at least one of the moon’s permanently shadowed regions. (There are areas on the moon that have not seen sunlight in billions of years; water is known to exist in such places.) Moreover, the orbit of the Moon and shifting launch windows on Earth mean that different landing sites must be chosen for different times of the year, and that if a launch slips, a backup landing site is ready to go. Sometimes the prospector will target the north pole of the Moon, and sometimes the south pole.

The lander itself is a pallet design—a flatbed from which the rover would roll once it has landed. It would immediately orient its solar panels toward the sun. Because of the rover’s relatively small size, the sun provides more than enough energy for its operation, especially when compared with Curiosity on Mars, which is big enough that it needs to be powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. “The rover that we’re going to go on is a little bit smaller than a golf cart,” James Smith, lead system engineer of the primary payload for the rover, told mental_floss earlier this year. “It’s not a MSL [Mars Science Laboratory] sized-rover, but it’s much bigger than Pathfinder.”

Once the science mission gets underway, a neutron spectrometer on the rover will look for signatures of hydrogen in the lunar subsurface. (Think of a metal detector, only for hydrogen.) This might originate from water, but might also be found in hydrated minerals, or be solar-implanted hydrogen. A drilling instrument will bring regolith material to the surface for quick inspection by a near infrared spectrometer. “A cool thing about this,” Jacqueline Quinn, an environmental engineer at Kennedy Space Center, told mental_floss, “is that we’re going to get a meter sample, and that’s never been done robotically.”

The instrument can also grab material and deliver it to an onboard oven. The oven is a sealed system, and through heating can drive off the water. A quantifying spectrometer system can determine the precise amount of water present in the lunar dirt. That water is also imaged and those images are sent back to Earth. For the first time, humans will see video of water extracted on another world.

The rover itself is nimble and engineered to traverse up to a 15-degree slope and not tilt over. The moon’s light gravity is an additional engineering challenge. “We have to have equal and opposite forces in one-sixth G,” says Quinn. “We have to have enough mass to counter our drilling—otherwise we’ll do beautiful doughnuts in the surface. We don’t want to do that.”

The Lunar Resource Prospector is designed to be launch-vehicle independent. SLS would be an optimal rocket for the mission, and the timing is just right, but the spacecraft’s “mass to translunar injection” is such that it can fly on anything from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and up. If all goes well, the mission will launch in the 2020s, and we’ll finally get a chance to see what in-situ resource utilization looks like in practice.

After years of either plain chocolate or peanut, M&Ms have been on a roll introducing new flavors into their candy-coated lineup. While some varietals—like peanut butter, pretzel, mint, almond, crispy, and dark chocolate—have stuck around, other flavors have been short-lived. (Sometimes for the better.)

After introductions of such limited-time flavors as pumpkin spice latte, white butterscotch, and pecan pie, the iconic candy brand clearly has no plans of stopping there. Junk food blog The Impulsive Buy recently shared its latest find: White Cheesecake M&Ms, made especially for Valentine’s Day, and spotted by one of their readers at Walmart. No word yet on how close it comes in taste to the real thing, but we’ll be looking forward to giving them a try.

Valentine’s Day candies are popping up on shelves! White Cheesecake M&M’s anyone? This was spotted by reader Robbie at Walmart.

A photo posted by The Impulsive Buy (@theimpulsivebuy) on Dec 18, 2016 at 4:58pm PST

[h/t: The Impulsive Buy]

Paramedics, who are among the most highly-skilled of Emergency Medical Services (or EMS) professionals, are in many ways like real-life superheroes, tending to people in their time of greatest need. While most of us hope to never see a paramedic on our doorstep, their appearance in times of distress can be critical to patient survival and recovery. Mental_floss spoke with several of these professionals about what it’s like to be a medical first responder.

1. THEY ARE NOT JUST “AMBULANCE DRIVERS.”

Paramedics are skilled medical professionals who have undergone many hours of rigorous training—far more than your average emergency medical technician (EMT). “A lot of people call us ambulance drivers,” says Nick, a critical care paramedic in New York. “It aggravates us because driving is such a small part of the job. Emergency medicine is what we’re doing.” Medical tasks paramedics regularly carry out include administering medication, starting IVs, intubating unconscious patients to help them breathe, intraosseous (bone) injections, reading electrocardiograms (EKGs), needle chest decompression (sticking a needle into the ribs to fix a collapsed lung), and differentiating between different types of heart attacks.

2. THEIR JOB IS NOT ALL BLOOD, BRUISES, AND BROKEN BONES.

Contrary to the popular image of emergency medical workers, some paramedics handle a relatively small number of traumatic injury calls. In New York and other big cities, the emergency medical system can be large enough to be split into specific specialties. Consequently, explains Thomas Rivalis, a New York paramedic who runs emergency management consulting firm Sagex LLC, city EMTs are often sent to scenes of trauma, while paramedics respond to medical calls (think heart attacks, strokes, and seizures). “If you are in a car accident, the person pulling you out of the car is most likely an EMT,” he says. “If you see someone clutch their chest and fall over, and you call 9-1-1, that is most likely going to be a paramedic.”

But in smaller suburban and rural systems, where resources are scarcer, it is more common for duties to overlap and paramedics to handle all types of calls.

3. THEY MIGHT ALSO HAVE TO PUT OUT FIRES—LITERALLY.

Emergency medical systems vary greatly by location, resulting in significant differences in the work paramedics carry out. Bruce Goldthwaite, a shift captain and paramedic in Franklin, New Hampshire, works in a dual role system where paramedics not only respond to all types of calls, but where all emergency medical workers work as firefighters as well. Bruce explains that on a typical day, he “could go on an ambulance call, to a building fire, on a technical rescue … On an odd day you could be on all of those trucks in a single shift.”

There are other common differences. Rural and suburban EMTs, unlike their urban counterparts, are frequently volunteers, drawing a paycheck if they choose to move on and become paramedics. And it’s typical for small-town EMS workers to wait for calls in a station house outfitted with beds and a lounge, unlike New York medics, who spend their time between calls waiting on an assigned corner in an ambulance.

4. THEY FIND WAYS TO FILL THEIR DOWN TIME.

While the job of an EMS worker is all about action, it also involves a fair amount of time sitting in an ambulance (or a station, depending on where you work) waiting for disaster to strike. Every paramedic has their preferred way of filling the time. “HBO Go is a thing,” Thomas says. “You’ve got guys who will binge-watch a whole series of Game of Thrones. Some people read. Then you’ve got the super tech who wants to bring in cardiac textbooks.” Since paramedics are subject to regular recertification, they sometimes use their downtime for studying. Thomas adds, however, that “bringing any type of napping accoutrement (read: pillows, blankets) is frowned upon.”

5. TRAFFIC IS THEIR BIGGEST HAZARD.

While driving may not constitute the most significant part of a paramedic’s job, it is one of the most dangerous. Nick has been in over 10 collisions in the course of his EMS career. “Far and away the driving is the most dangerous aspect,” he says. “When you’re driving with sirens and going through red lights and trying to move aggressively through traffic, it’s inherently dangerous.”

Compounding the issue is the fact that the patient compartment of most ambulances, unlike the cab, is essentially an aluminum box that doesn’t offer a lot of protection. Medics take care to secure their patient in the stretcher but frequently remain untethered themselves while working, putting them at risk of being flung around in the event of a wreck. The American ambulance manufacturing industry is taking steps to adopt safer crew restraint systems similar to those in Europe and Australia, but change is slow in coming.

6. ABOUT THAT LOVELY SOUND …

Few people would describe the sound of an ambulance siren as “nice.” Urban dwellers, in particular, loathe the shriek that seems to form a constant backdrop to city life. But how do paramedics, who hear sirens far more than anyone else, feel about this tool of their trade?

“People give you nasty looks when you turn on a siren. Like ‘oh, my eardrum,’” Thomas says. “It’s not that much quieter inside the cab.” Particularly pernicious is the rumbling siren known as the Howler, which is a feature on some police cars and ambulances. “The button actually says ‘wear hearing protection when you use this,’” Thomas says. “You think any of us even have hearing protection?” Nick, however, insists that he has gotten so used to sirens that he can sleep through them.

7. STAIRS ARE THEIR NEMESIS.

Paramedics dread calls that involve stairs. Throw in a heavy patient unable to get up and down steps by themselves, and you have a recipe for paramedic back strain. These jobs can be particularly brutal in New York, where buildings are tall and pre-war structures often lack an elevator. Thomas describes arriving at a building to tend to a patient on the 15th floor, only to find that the elevator was out of service. “Just as we were getting ready to carry her down,” he says, “the repair guys finished fixing the elevator. I’ve never been so happy.”

8. THE TRAINING IS VERY TOUGH.

Becoming an entry-level EMT (or EMT-B, for Basic) requires between 120 and 150 hours of schooling, but acquiring the skills to become a paramedic requires many more—typically around 1200 to 1800 additional hours. Like a lot of medical training, it is rigorous and the hours long. Nick refers to his own training as “just grueling … It’s basically a straight year where you’re not going to see your friends, you’re not going to see your family.” Not everyone makes it through on their first try. And, unfortunately, if you drop out, you have to start all over again.

9. THE PAY IS NOT NECESSARILY GREAT.

For people who spend their time saving lives, EMS workers are not always well-compensated. The median annual wage for paramedics and EMTs in 2015 was $31,980. Within that, there is a broad pay range, with EMTs (volunteer units aside) often making considerably less (around $10 an hour in some places), and the best-paid paramedics making over $60,000.

10. DARK HUMOR IS PRETTY COMMON.

Sometimes a few jokes are necessary to get through a day filled with illness and injury. Paramedics are known to rely on this strategy, and their wisecracks frequently take trip to the dark side. “It’s just terrible, terrible dark humor all the time,” Nick says. “Sometimes people who are not in medicine are aghast. When you face mortality all the time, you have a different perception of death.”

11. THEY CAN BE SUPERSTITIOUS.

Actors avoid speaking the name of Macbeth, instead referring to the famous Shakespeare work as “the Scottish play.” And they would rather have someone tell them to “break a leg” than to wish them good luck. Paramedics, it turns out, have their superstitions too. Thomas says that he avoids uttering the words “slow” or “quiet” (he uses the “S-word” and the “Q-word”) on the job, lest they invoke the wrath of the “EMS gods” and bring about a tough shift. In addition, some paramedics earn a reputation as “black clouds.” “You work with that one person,” he says, “and you know that there’s going to be a cardiac arrest or a five car pileup.”

12. THEY’RE HERE TO HELP.

Paramedics earn their superhero reputation for a reason: Most are drawn to the job out of an earnest desire to help people. Bruce says that he has always enjoyed helping others, but that he was set on his particular path after watching a paramedic attend to his father when he was having a cardiac arrest. “It was pretty impressive,” he says, “and I thought if you can help people in that way, I like it. Sign me up.” For Thomas, one of the biggest rewards is the opportunity to bring “dignity to people who don’t often get to experience it—people who have dependence issues, people who are homeless. You’re interacting with these people in a position of authority, and you can use this to make their day worse than it is, or you can bring a little dignity to their lives.”

13. THEY LIKE IT IF YOU’RE NICE.

Because they deal with people in distress, a paramedic’s job is often thankless. It helps if you’re nice. “We’re human. We make mistakes,” Thomas says. “We have bad days, we have good days. We all come to work to help people and we try our best. But it’s up to the person that we’re helping to meet us half way. We know we’re coming in on the worst day of your life—but the best thing that you can do is just give us your cooperation. You want to get to the hospital. We want to take you to the hospital. But we have to assess you first.”

14. THE ONLY WAY TO KNOW WHETHER YOU’RE A PARAMEDIC IS TO GO ON A FIRST CALL.

Bruce emphasizes that much of what a paramedic sees on a daily basis the general public will never have to encounter in their lives. “It’s a very gratifying job,” he says, “but it’s a tough job. You see a lot of things that you can’t get rid of.” Despite the many hours of training and simulations that go into certification, it’s not possible for an EMS worker to know how they will react in a real situation until they are actually in one. “You can do all the classroom work and all the preparatory imagining of what it’s going to be like when you’re standing in front of a person who’s dying,” Nick says. “Sometimes people just can’t handle it, and you can’t really guess who it’s going to be.” He adds, however, that he took to the job pretty quickly. Fortunately for the public, people who have what it takes to be a paramedic are out there.

All photos via iStock.

4 Classic TV Show Deaths. With video evidence so you can relive the moments.
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In the new movie Why Him? Bryan Cranston doesn’t like his daughter’s new rich boyfriend. In the parody Why Walt? Bryan Cranston is his daughter’s rich boyfriend, Walter White. Contains NSFW language.
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Flavorwire Staffers on Their Worst Cultural Experiences of 2016. Disappointing movies, boring books, and then there were the political party conventions.
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The U.S. government is asking foreign visitors to hand over their social media profiles. There’s no law against it, but the ACLU doesn’t like it.
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A Journey To The Bottom Of The Internet. In which we get a look at the cables that carry signals all over the world.
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Marvel icon Stan Lee turned 94 years old, so let’s celebrate by watching his movie cameos from the past 16 years.
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36 Bizarre Things Being Dropped on New Year’s Eve. Many towns have their own version of the Times Square celebration, with a little local flavor.

Ghostbusters is a perfect idea for a movie, but what about its viability as a business? Are Venkman and Ray able to make ends meet by catching ghosts in New York City, or is the whole operation just one slow month away from closing up shop? Well, the folks over at Bizdaq decided to crunch the numbers to see just how much the Ghostbusters’ business would actually be worth in the real world.

The site took everything into account: Manhattan rent, equipment, and all the other expenses the team would have run into during their first year on the job. While the Ghostbusters never explicitly say how much they make per year, at one point, when they capture Slimer at the Sedgewick Hotel, they say, “For the entrapment, we’re gonna have to ask you for four big ones. Four thousand for that. But we are having a special this week on proton charging and storage of the beast, and that’s only going to come to one thousand dollars, fortunately.”

So the site guesses that each ghost nets about $5000, and they capture nine ghosts during the span of the film. Since the film takes place from early October through November 9, 1984, that means the team made an estimated $45,000 in about a five-week span. If that rate stays the same, it averages out to around $468,000 for their first year, which would be $1,092,731 in 2016 dollars.

Of course, that’s all money that the ‘Busters made before things like rent, utilities, salary, etc. were factored in. Bizdaq makes plenty of other calculations to see what the business is actually worth when all their expenses and assets are considered, leading to an estimated total of $627,483 in 2016 dollars. That’s an impressive haul for a first-year start-up, especially one that specializes in taking down sentient marshmallows the size of skyscrapers.

[h/t: Nerdist]

Vending machines are awesome! For a few coins or dollars, you can quickly buy just about anything from a can of Coca-Cola to random used books or even Holy Water. Now a new California-based startup called Byte Foods is looking to reinvent vending machine food by keeping theirs fully stocked with fresh, healthy, locally sourced food and drinks, according to TechCrunch.

Internet-connected vending machines aren’t new, but Byte is taking the next step forward by adding RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) technology and smart analytics software. Byte’s vending machines—which are filled with mostly organic beverages, iced coffee, sandwiches, soups, salads, and even burritos—look like the refrigerated displays and kiosks you’d find at any convenience store, only the units are locked and come with a touchscreen menu with a list of item descriptions and pricing. When you’re ready to buy, simply swipe your credit card through the reader and just take your items and go.

Each item features an RFID tag, so you can take as many items as you’d like once you’re inside the unit. If you change your mind, simply put the items back and you won’t be charged; your credit card will only be billed after you close the door. The vending machines also feature software that allows vendors to know which items are proving to be particularly popular and are in danger of becoming out of stock for a faster turnaround. It also features surge and dynamic pricing on items that are in demand or products that are about to spoil.

“Byte is fine tuning their food offering and variety, which is important in attracting repeat customers,” Jin Park, a Byte Foods board member, told TechCrunch. “There are many opportunities here to partner with various local food providers. One key revenue driver will be expanding the number of refrigerators.”

Byte Foods just raised $5.5 million in seed funding and plans to add more smart vending machines in offices, hotels, college campuses, and hospitals around the San Francisco Bay Area before expanding to new regions in 2017.

[h/t TechCrunch]