Most of us have met that quirky candy connoisseur who only eats pink Skittles or brown M&Ms. Willem Pennings, a mechanical engineering student at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, designed a device to make life easier for these discerning eaters: a candy-sorting machine.
On his blog, Pennings describes how the sorting machine—which was created using CAD software and contains 3D-printed parts—works. Users pour mixed candies into a funnel, and a tiny nozzle shoots same-colored sweets into their respective dishes. This process is made possible thanks to an RGB sensor (a color-sensing device). It can detect—and categorize—any type of item, so long as the individual pieces are regularly and evenly shaped.
Once in action, the machine works fast: It takes only two to three minutes to sort a 300-gram bag of Skittles or M&Ms, and it can sort two pieces per second.
Visit Pennings’s blog for a step-by-step tutorial on how to make your own candy-sorting machine. Keep in mind, however, that the project may take a long time, and cost a lot of money: Pennings himself worked on his own machine from May 2016 until last December, and spent nearly €500 (more than $530) on its parts and software.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Edward Hopper, the quintessential American realist painter behind Nighthawks. To honor him, Orbitz animated some of his classic works, Nighthawks included. Scroll through the GIFs to bring Hopper’s work to life, and learn to name-drop a few of his less famous paintings, too.
Credit card companies claim they want to help you, by giving you access to funds for the things you want and rewarding you for good spending habits—and to an extent, this is true. But the credit card industry is a profitable one: It makes money by charging merchant fees, selling aggregated customer data, and, most lucratively, collecting customer fees and interest. The more debt you revolve, the more money they make.
You can beat them at this game—you just need to know their tactics. Here are five tricks to look out for.
1. THEY CHARGE YOU DEFERRED INTEREST.
A “0 percent introductory APR” offer—a common perk credit card companies use to get you to sign up—means you will not be charged interest on your balance for a certain amount of time. Once that introductory period expires, the card’s standard interest rate kicks in and you will be responsible for paying interest on whatever balance is left on the card.
Deferred interest credit cards are kind of like the sly cousin of 0 percent introductory APR cards. With deferred interest, you also have an introductory period during which you don’t have to pay interest. However, if you don’t pay off your card completely at the end of the promotional period (even if you have just $1 left), you will owe interest retroactively on all purchases you made during that time. For example, let’s say you open a six-month deferred interest card, rack up $1000 in purchases, and then accidentally leave a remaining balance of $10 on the card. You will owe interest on the entire $1000 balance.
The deferred interest details are often buried in the terms and conditions, so consumers are surprised to learn how much they owe after the introductory period. Worse, this often traps consumers into a debt cycle: If they can’t pay off the balance once the interest charges are added, they have to keep revolving it, paying even more in interest each month.
This isn’t to say that signing up for a deferred interest card is a terrible idea. The key in making it work in your favor is to pay the balance off in full by the end of the promo period. If you don’t have the cash on hand, though, you’re taking a big risk.
2. THEY AUTOMATICALLY INCREASE YOUR CREDIT LIMIT.
Getting a letter or email from your credit card company saying you are now allowed to spend thousands of dollars more can feel like you’ve hit the jackpot. But the credit card companies are smart—they don’t give increases to delinquent customers who don’t pay; they offer them to paying customers who may revolve a small balance. The purpose of this new spending limit is, therefore, to encourage you to spend more and revolve a higher balance, therein making the credit card company more money.
Also, many credit cards do let you spend more than your limit, they just charge you a fee when you do. You might think that all attempted purchases over your credit limit will be declined, but in many cases they can in fact be processed and you will be slapped with an additional $35 over-limit fee. The remedy for all of this, of course, is to know your account’s terms and to keep your spending to what you can afford, even if your limit increases.
3. THEY ADVERTISE DEBT AS “FLEXIBILITY.”
If you use your credit card responsibly, credit card companies don’t make as much money from you; they want you to carry a balance. So to put a positive spin on it, they make it seem like debt is a benefit they offer. American Express, for example, gives cardholders a “flexible credit card payment option,” defined as “the option to carry a balance each month with interest.” In other words, revolving your debt. It’s certainly an option, but not one that’s a very good option for the consumer.
4. THEY RAISE YOUR INTEREST RATE.
Credit card companies are allowed to increase your rate for a number of reasons. Fortunately, the Credit CARD (Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure) Act of 2009 keeps them from increasing your rate on an existing balance—unless you miss your payments. If you’re late a couple of times, they’re allowed to charge a penalty APR that can indeed apply to your existing balance and any new purchases.
The CARD Act does requires the credit card companies to warn you of the new penalty rate 45 days in advance and also to reconsider your rate after you’ve made six consecutive on-time monthly payments.
5. THEY CHARGE HIDDEN FEES.
We really can’t underline enough how important it is for you to read the fine print on your credit card account. In addition to hiking interest rates, credit card companies can gouge you with hidden fees, so be on the lookout for the following when reading through your terms:
Balance transfer fees
Foreign transaction fees
Finance charges
Annual fees
Also, bear in mind that many rewards cards charge annual fees but waive them the first year.
The death of America’s drive-in movie theaters isn’t due for a turnaround anytime soon thanks to increasingly convenient streaming and home video options, but that’s not discouraging some enterprising film lovers in Tennessee. They’re set to build a massive drive-in in Nashville, with a twist—it’ll be indoors.
August Moon
The August Moon Drive-In will be something akin to the Cowboys Stadium of vehicular moviegoing, with a 40,000-square-foot air-supported dome offering an enclosed, weatherproof environment. The idea, according to a recent press release, is to replicate “that perfect summer night at sunset” by projecting stars, fireflies, and other visuals onto the roof. Visitors will experience films projected onto what’s being billed as the largest non-IMAX screen in the country. In addition to conventional seating, they’ll also be able to spread out on provided picnic sheets or sit in classic cars already parked inside the facility.
Investors also plan on offering live music, “interactive” movie previews with stage actors on the premises, and movie curation based on attendee voting. Like the road attractions of the 20th century, each screening is expected to provide up to three hours of entertainment.
The effort is being overseen by Michael Counts, a designer of immersive experience entertainment (The Walking Dead Experience). With admission ranging from $8 to $20, the August Moon is scheduled to open near Nissan Stadium in the second quarter of 2018.
Bigfoot takes on a Boston nor’easter. Image Credit: Kayana Szymczak/Getty Images
A major nor’easter will bring heavy snow and gusty winds to the northeastern megalopolis on Thursday, February 9, dropping at least a half-foot of snow across the most heavily populated region of the United States. The dose of intense winter weather will snarl travel and likely bring daily life to a halt through the beginning of the weekend. The heaviest accumulations are possible between New York City and Boston, where some locations could see a foot or more of snow by sunrise on Friday.
The catalyst behind the classic winter storm is a strong disturbance digging its way east across the country. The same system that will trigger the nor’easter brought snow and subzero temperatures to the Upper Midwest earlier this week; morning lows dropped lower than -20°F in North Dakota and Minnesota on Wednesday morning. The upper-level trough will cause a low-pressure system to develop at the surface in Virginia on Wednesday night. This low will quickly strengthen as it moves over the Atlantic Ocean and tracks parallel to the East Coast. It’s a scene that repeats itself every winter—one that snow lovers and winter haters alike are all too familiar with.
The Weather Prediction Center’s most likely snowfall forecast for the three-day period beginning at 7:00 AM EST on Thursday, February 9, 2017. Image Credit: Dennis Mersereau
The latest forecast from NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center calls for about half a foot of snow between eastern Pennsylvania through southern New England. The greatest chance for heavy snow stretches from northeastern Pennsylvania through eastern Massachusetts, where the most productive snow bands are expected to develop. Precipitation will begin on Thursday morning in the Mid-Atlantic and work its way north through the afternoon hours. The last of the snow should taper off on Friday morning in New England. It’s worth noting that there will be a relatively sharp gradient between having to crack out the shovel and a dusting on the grass—a boundary that’s likely to set up right along the Mason-Dixon Line. Precipitation will fall mostly as snow north of this line, while the storm will start as rain and could end as some snow to its south. It’s likely too warm for the Washington D.C. area to see more than a light coating of snow at the most, but its far northern suburbs could see a few inches from this system.
A weather model simulation of the nor’easter on Thursday morning, showing the heaviest snow bands on the northwest side of the storm. Image Credit: Pivotal Weather
Like so many nor’easters before it, this storm will play tug of war between unusually warm temperatures to the south and bitterly cold Arctic air to the north. The sweet spot for the heaviest snow will be where the cold air intersects with the area that has the highest moisture and the strongest lift, a region called the deformation zone. The deformation zone is almost always on the northwestern side of nor’easters, resulting in a swath of heavy snow that parallels the coast. Sometimes the heaviest snow bands set up far enough inland to miss the big cities, and sometimes they form right over the cities and result in those blockbuster blizzards that people remember for years.
The fact that the heaviest snow falls in such a narrow area makes forecasting nor’easters a tricky business. Warm air is a plague in East Coast winter storms; it can turn a potential snowstorm into an icy disaster or just a cold, miserable rain. A small eastward or westward shift—just one or two dozen miles—can render a snowfall forecast completely useless. This happened just last month during the significant snowstorm in the Carolinas and Virginia. The storm tracked a little farther inland than expected, allowing warm air to chew away at the snow and result in mostly ice around cities like Raleigh, North Carolina, while giving heavier snow to Greensboro, two hours to the west of Raleigh.
Temperatures have been a roller coaster leading up to this snowstorm, and that trend will continue soon after it leaves. It’s been so warm on the East Coast lately that some cities are easily setting daily high temperature records, including Washington D.C’s major airports on Tuesday and every airport around New York City on Wednesday. Temperatures behind the nor’easter will remain frigid during the day on Thursday and Friday as Arctic air drains in with the westerly winds behind the storm, aided by the icebox effect of having snow on the ground. Low temperatures on Thursday night will fall into the teens and single digits in areas with snow on the ground, and high temperatures on Friday will struggle to climb out of the 20s. Highs will quickly climb back above normal on Sunday and last through early next week, helping to melt any snow that falls from this hard-hitting but ultimately fleeting burst of winter.
Food is a staple of any great public festival, but for some, it’s more that just a feature—it’s the entire point. From Hawaii to New York, we’ve rounded up 12 food festivals that are centered on particular items, products, activities or recipes. If you’ve got a highly specific grub passion, here’s where you can meet up and celebrate with all your fellow foodies.
1. WAIKIKI SPAM JAM
Residents of Hawaii eat more Spam than any other state, so it’s only natural that Hawaiians throw a party for the canned meat. The Waikiki Spam Jam draws crowds of up to 25,000 people for the single day event. This year, several restaurants will be there showing off their unique Spam recipes, and there will be two stages at the ends of Kalakaua Avenue with free entertainment. The event is a fundraiser for the Hawaii Food Bank, and you can donate cans of Spam at the festival. The 2017 Spam Jam will be held on April 29.
2. WINCHESTER BEER CHEESE FESTIVAL
Ah, beer cheese. The spread has somewhat murky origins, but is believed to have appeared around the 1940s at Johnnie Allman’s restaurant in Kentucky. The blend of cheese, beer, and spices is now made by quite a few manufacturers, who converge on Winchester, Kentucky in June for the Winchester Beer Cheese Festival. The event holds a competition for both commercial and amateur beer cheese makers, and there’s other food available, as well as arts and crafts, entertainment, and family activities. The dates for the 2017 Beer Cheese festival have not been announced, but you can keep up with developments on Facebook.
3. RC-MOONPIE FESTIVAL
The Southern tradition of enjoying a Moon Pie with an RC Cola finds its zenith in Bell Buckle, Tennessee, where the RC-MoonPie Festival takes place every year on the third Saturday in June. It began in 1994 when the town (population 405) was trying to find a way to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Moon Pie company. The first festival was such a success that Bell Buckle decided to repeat it every summer. Events include the “who traveled the furthest” contest, a foot race, a parade, royalty coronation, and the ceremonial cutting of the world’s largest Moon Pie. The 2017 RC-MoonPie festival will be held on June 17.
4. WHOOPIE PIE FESTIVAL
Whoopie Pies are a New England treat comprised of two mounds of chocolate cake with a filling of cream, frosting, or marshmallow in the middle. Whoopie Pie is Maine’s official state treat, and the Maine Whoopie Pie Festival in Dover-Foxcroft makes the most of that designation. The signature event is the Whoopie Pie baking competition, but if you’d rather eat than cook, there’s also a Whoopie Pie eating contest, and you can work it all off at the street dance that night. The 2017 Maine Whoopie Pie Festival is scheduled for June 24.
Phelps, New York has long been known for its impressive sauerkraut production, so in 1967, the Chamber of Commerce partnered with Silver Floss Sauerkraut to launch the first Phelps Sauerkraut Weekend. Fifty years later, the annual festival is still going strong, even though the town’s sauerkraut production has diminished. The three-day festival includes a sauerkraut recipe competition, kraut and kraut hot dog eating contests, and a cabbage head decorating contest. The 2017 Phelps Sauerkraut Weekend will be held August 4 through August 6.
6. SACRAMENTO BANANA FESTIVAL
The Sacramento Banana Festival goes, well you know, over everyone’s favorite yellow fruit. Despite the name, the festival is held in nearby Elk Grove, California, as a fundraiser for the National Academic Youth Corps. Food for the 2016 Banana Festival included banana guacamole, banana kabobs, banana ginger pudding, banana tacos, banana sorrel, and more. There’s also a cook-off pitting Sacramento against Oakland, and plenty of entertainment and family activities. Dates for the 2017 festival are not set, but will likely be sometime in August.
7. LIGONIER MARSHMALLOW FESTIVAL
Ligonier, Indiana, inaugurated a festival in 1952 and named it Strawberry Valley Days in honor of local crops. Forty years later it was redesigned to celebrate a very different kind of food item: the marshmallow. (By 1992 the sugar puffs had become one of the town’s biggest industries.) Now the Ligonier Marshmallow Festival is held every Labor Day weekend. Marshmallow-related activities at the festival include marshmallow games, a marshmallow bake-off, photos with the Marshmallow Man, and of course, marshmallows toasted around the fire. To cleanse the palate, there’s even a pizza-eating contest. This year’s Marshmallow Festival will be held September 1 through September 4.
8. LOWER EAST SIDE PICKLE DAY
Manhattan is the place for the annual Lower East Side Pickle Day. For one day in the fall, the Big Apple’s Orchard Street is filled with vendors showing off a wide variety of pickled cucumbers and other vegetables, and salty snacks to go with them. The festival features free entertainment and something called the “home pickling/dancing contest.” We’re not sure if you’re supposed to do both at the same time, but you can find out at the 2017 Pickle Day (the date has not yet been announced).
9. BRIDGEVILLE APPLE-SCRAPPLE FESTIVAL
Scrapple is a Pennsylvania Dutch dish developed as a way of making sure there’s no waste in the hog-butchering process. Pork bits are formed into a loaf with cornmeal and flour, then sliced and pan-fried. The Bridgeville Apple-Scrapple Festival in Delaware celebrates both scrapple and the apple harvest season—with plenty of both available depending on your craving. Events include the Ladies Skillet Toss, Scrapple Chunkin’ Contest, Kids Apple Toss, Invitational Scrapple Sling, and the Home Decorating Contest, in which Bridgeville residents decorate their lawns with the theme of apples and scrapple. The 2017 Apple Scrapple Festival will be held on October 13 and 14.
10. PORTLAND BOURBON & BACON FEST
The Portland Bourbon & Bacon Fest just wrapped up its second annual event, so cured meat and brew-lovers will have to wait until next year to bask in the glow of this delicious celebration. Sponsored by the Oregon Museum of Space and Industry, the event features pork entrees from various local restaurants, drinks from local craft breweries and distilleries, and the freedom to stroll through the museum without children.
11. FELLSMERE FROG LEG FESTIVAL
The Fellsmere Frog Leg Festival is one of the few food festivals taking place in January, since Fellsmere is in perpetually-balmy Florida. The municipal festival raises funds for the city’s parks and recreation needs, especially when it comes to projects and facilities for kids. In addition to contests, entertainment, a car show, and carnival, the main draw is the many frog leg and gator tail dinners served up during the festival. You may have missed this year’s party, but stay tuned: Dates for the 2018 festival should be announced later this year.
Finally, for eaters who are more interested in an experience than any particular food item, there’s the Film Food Festival in New York City. For this twist on a traditional film festival, the selected movies are all about food or feature food in a notable way, and while you watch, you eat the same meals alongside people on the screen. Often, the food in the theater is even cooked by the same chefs as in the film; otherwise, local restaurants are recruited to recreate the dishes. The audience is served when the food appears onscreen. Selections are balanced between dramas, food documentaries, and short films. The 2017 Food Film Festival will be held October 19-22. If you can’t make it, the festival hosts similar events in other locations.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has made around 375,000 images of public-domain artworks from its collections freely available online, The New York Times reports. Members of the public can download, edit, and distribute high-resolution photos from the Met’s website, with no copyright restrictions whatsoever.
The initiative—a part of the Met’s new open access policy—includes partnerships with Creative Commons, Wikimedia, Artstor, Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Art Resource, and Pinterest in order to improve access to the museum’s images. For example, web users can now find images, save, tag, or “pin” images of artworks on Creative Commons, as Hyperallergic reports. The Met has also named a new “Wikipedian in Residence,” Richard Knipel, who’s responsible for uploading pictures into Wikimedia Commons, documenting their metadata, and creating new articles on various artworks or topics.
The images feature 200,000 artworks, including famous paintings like Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware and El Greco’s The Vision of Saint John. They comprise a large portion of the Met’s collections, although many other of the institution’s public domain works—think engravings, posters, and prints—have yet to be digitized. (Another 65,000 Met artworks have been digitized, but they don’t fall under public domain.)
“Our comprehensive and diverse museum collection spans 5000 years of world culture,” Met director Thomas P. Campbell said in a statement quoted by Artnet. “Our core mission is to be open and accessible for all who wish to study and enjoy the works of art in our care. Increasing access to the museum’s collection and scholarship serves the interests and needs of our 21st-century audiences by offering new resources for creativity, knowledge, and ideas.”
As Hyperallergic points out, the Met’s website has contained hundreds of thousands of publicly accessible images since 2014, but visitors were only able to download them for free if they were intended for non-commercial or scholarly use. Now, all of those images have CC0 1.0 or Creative Commons Zero licenses. You can browse the newly available works by going to the Met’s Collection page and selecting the “Public Domain Artworks” filter on the left.
Digitized images of the Met’s collections will be rolled out gradually, AFP Relax News reports.
It’s clear that gender inequality is an issue in the workforce, but figuring out how to best eliminate it isn’t always so straightforward. According to one study released last year, the gender pay gap starts to grow significantly wider once women hit age 32. The reason? Shouldering the majority of the child-rearing responsibilities makes it a lot harder for women to hold nine-to-five jobs. A new job search website aims to combat this by only highlighting positions that offer flexible schedules.
Werk is the brainchild of former consultant Anna Auerbach and veteran law attorney Annie Dean. Dean became aware of a need for this type of service after becoming a parent herself: “I was sitting at my desk at my law firm, feeling completely exhausted and utterly defeated,” she tells mental_floss. “I was in the middle of an intense deal and there just weren’t enough hours in the day for what I was responsible for.”
Auerbach, a former refugee and a mother of one, noticed the same issue. “Everywhere I looked, women were being told to work harder, to speak louder, to negotiate more. But nothing was attempting to answer the question of, ‘How do we keep talented women in the workforce?’ It was then I knew something fundamental had to change,” she says.
Like competing job search sites Monster, LinkedIn, and Indeed, Werk provides a way for job-seekers to search for openings online. What sets Werk apart is the quality of the listings—every position that’s posted offers pre-negotiated flexibility. Users can sort jobs based on the ability to work remotely, work part-time, work unconventional hours, or tweak their schedules with little notice to keep up with the unpredictable demands of caring for dependents.
It’s easy to see how this might appeal to a certain type of worker: Thirty percent of women with bachelor’s degrees drop out of the workforce when they have a child, while 19 percent of women with a master’s degree or higher and 26 percent of women with less than a bachelor’s degree do the same. But Werk emphasizes that their mission can benefit employers as well. According to Auerbach and Dean, employees with flexibility tend to be happier at work and more likely to stay. They also cite a study by McKinsey & Company that found gender-diverse companies are more likely to outperform their peers.
Werk has already attracted some big-name companies, featuring listings at companies like Facebook, Uber, and Samsung. A membership to use the job search tool costs $48 a year, which may be well worth it to caregiving professionals of any gender looking to take control of their schedules. As Dean says, “Our generation has the ability to say what works and what doesn’t, and we have a responsibility to act on it.”
