In the Last Two Years, Scientists Have Discovered over 50 Species of Plastic-Eating Fungi

This is great news!

If you feel a pang of guilt every time you throw a piece of plastic away and start spiraling into anxiety about the impending climate apocalypse — here is some news that may brighten your day.

Plastic is infamous for its ability to pollute the environment for years and years without degrading. But because the planet is magical, there are certain organisms that can degrade plastic. Dozens and dozens of them, apparently.

In 2011, students at Yale discovered a plastic-eating fungus in Ecuador called Pestalotiopsis microspora. This fungus can digest polyurethane, even in an air-free environment (like the bottom of a landfill).

Photo Credit: iStock

This breakthrough was already good news, but as researchers continued to turn their attention to the subject, it became clear that Pestalotiopsis microspora is not unique among fungi in its ability to degrade plastic.

Researchers at Utrecht University were able to achieve a similar result with Oyster mushrooms and Split gill mushrooms in the lab; this process even resulted in an edible end product. In 2017, scientist Sehroon Khan and his team found another biodegrading fungus in a landfill in Pakistan called Asperillus tubigensis, which is capable of breaking down polyester polyurethane (packing foam).

Sehroon and his team went on to find over 50 other species of plastic-eating fungus since 2017.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Scientists still have a long way to go before this research is applicable on a large scale as a means of plastic recycling.

Still, this is proof that anything is possible here on Planet Earth. You never know where new solutions are going to come from.

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15 People Share Tricks for Falling Asleep When You’re Not Tired

Listen up, all you insomniacs.

There are times in life when you can give into your night owl tendencies. You can stay up as late as you want, have a couple of drinks, and binge something on Netflix until your eyes go blurry – it’s lovely.

There are more times, though, when what’s coming down the pike tomorrow is more than enough reason to try to get some shut-eye, even if you’re not tired at nine or ten pm.

So how do you fall asleep before you’re ready? Well, these 15 Redditors have some tips!

15. A world of my own.

I just make up stories in my head. Sometimes I’m in the world of a TV show I like or in my own little dream universe I made where I have made up characters and such. And eventually I just fall asleep doing this.

Edit:may not be that much but I’m actually really happy about 1.8k upvotes on my first comment ever. Thank you!

14. Stories in my head.

I play some stories in my head. Like you’re suddenly a character in your favorite series and what would you do and stuff.

13. How It’s Melatonin.

How it’s Made. That shit should be called How it’s Melatonin.

12. Glad or annoyed.

basically I convince myself I’ve given up and go on my phone or play 3DS and make a plan to read something or play to a measurable point, so that there’s something that I WANT to stay awake for. Something that sleep would interrupt. Puts me right the fk to sleep, and I’m never sure if I should be glad or annoyed lol

11. Goodnight toes.

This is going to sound weird, but I slowly say good night to each of my body parts, starting with my toes and working up. Usually, I’m asleep by the time I hit my chest or so. If I’m not, I know it’s going to be a long night.

Let the reddit ridicule begin. ?

10. Works for my babies.

White noise, such as rain sounds.

9. Counting.

I learned a trick recently that helps me a lot.

I count backwards from 99. SLOWLY.

The key is to do it slowly, and I cannot emphasize the importance of that enough. Think the number, then take a pause that feels a little bit too long before thinking the next number, then take another pause.

99… pause…
98… pause…
97… pause…
96… pause…

The lowest I’ve ever counted is into the 60s or maybe the 50s before I fall asleep. Often, I’m asleep before I’m through the 80s. Sometimes I’ll lose track of what the next number is because I catch myself falling asleep, so I’ll start over, and I always fall asleep quickly after that.

Again, the key is to count backward… s l o w l y .

Before I started doing this, I used to toss and turn in bed for hours trying to fall asleep. But this knocks me out in minutes.

Maybe you’re wondering “Why start at 99? Why not 100?” If I start at 100, I hear Bono’s voice from the Rattle And Hum version of Bullet The Blue Sky, saying “Slappin’ ’em down… 100… 200…” which eventually leads to “Am I buggin’ you? Don’t mean to bug you” from Silver And Gold. And that bugs me, which makes it even harder to fall asleep, goddammit. So, I start at 99 instead, because fuck that.

8. The big sad.

Thinking about the big sad and cry myself to sleep.

7. Bob Ross.

Cheesy as it is, bob ross panting videos on youtube. He makes me feel safe an secure,

talking on and on about his animals,

i love falling asleep to the funny stories he tells about his paintings.

He calms me down a lot when I’m feeling anxious or upset (which is mainly the reason I stay up) and i can drift off dreaming about happy little clouds and trees, and a river that bob fishes in.

Or well catches a fish, gives it cpr, names it and gives him a little pat on the toot toot and sends him on his way lmao.

Edit: oh wow gold! I guess as is customary i thank the person for it. Well thank you!!

6. Oldie but goodie.

Masturbate.

5. Sad, but true.

Reading. It’s kinda sad but I’ve realized books put me to sleep now, even if it’s an exciting book.

Edit: many people are asking, so I’ll explain here: reading is not sad in itself, I love reading. I think it’s sad because reading started to put me to sleep, so I now read much less than I used to as a kid.

Oh, and thanks for the shinies!

4. Inside joke?

Thinking about all the gophers I didn’t run over in 2005

3. Not Reddit.

Well not reddit that’s for sure (sent at 2:47 in the morning)

Edit: I thankfully did end up falling asleep and yada yada etc. thanks for the silver

2. This is why I fall asleep on my kid’s floor most nights.

Pretending to be asleep.

1. Like I’ve been knocked out.

This is so silly but I watch the 09 sherlock Holmes movie with rdj. Puts my ass right to sleep like i done been knocked out

It can’t hurt to try, right?

The post 15 People Share Tricks for Falling Asleep When You’re Not Tired appeared first on UberFacts.

This Might Make You Feel Old. These 20 Songs Are Now Considered Classic Rock.

Are you ready to feel a little depressed? Cause that’s what happened when I looked over this list. We’re getting old, friends…it’s time to face the facts.

When I think of “classic rock”, I’m thinking Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, etc. And now, we have this…

But at least we have all the great memories, right?!?!

“Classic rock.” Ughhhhhh.

1. Foo Fighters – “Everlong”

2. Alanis Morissette – “Ironic”

3. Garbage – “Stupid Girl”

4. R.E.M. – “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?”

5. The Smashing Pumpkins – “Tonight, Tonight”

6. Superdrag – “Sucked Out”

7. No Doubt – “Spiderwebs”

8. The Verve Pipe – “The Freshmen”

9. Ben Folds Five – “Brick”

10. Counting Crows – “A Long December”

11. Blur – “Song 2”

12. Veruca Salt – “Seether”

13. Green Day – “Basket Case”

14. The Wallflowers, “One Headlight”

15. Fiona Apple – “Criminal”

16. Hole – “Celebrity Skin”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3dWBLoU–E

17. Bush – “Glycerine”

18. Stone Temple Pilots – “Interstate Love Song”

19. Nada Surf – “Popular”

20. Gin Blossoms – “Hey Jealousy”

See you at the retirement home!

The post This Might Make You Feel Old. These 20 Songs Are Now Considered Classic Rock. appeared first on UberFacts.

These People Saw Bad Parenting and Shared It with the World

There sure are a lot of sh*tty parents out there, huh? Parents who are rude, crude, ignorant, and have no regard for other people, kids and adults alike.

But good for these folks for exposing them to the world!

1. Just a reminder…

This is at my local park that has 5 baseball fields. The parents need to control themselves. from trashy

2. So rude

"Taking a picture of me???" – Woman changing her baby’s dirty diaper on top of an Old Navy clothing display from trashy

3. This is terrible

Parents letting their children play on the "Vietnam Women’s Memorial" Right in front of Veterans. from pics

4. Oops

These kids just destroyed this thrift shops toy section and their parents did nothing from trashy

5. Disgusting

This mother… from trashy

6. Wow. Unreal.

Someone took their measles-infected kid to the play area at Ikea. from trashy

7. So trashy.

Leaving dirty diapers at your table after leaving a restaurant is pretty trashy from trashy

8. Other people exist, folks

Letting your kid watch a movie on full volume in a restaurant… from mildlyinfuriating

9. No rules

Lifting your kids over a guard rail so you can ignore them with your smartphone while they try to destroy a display. from trashy

10. They’re busy

Neglectful parents from trashy

11. Over the line

12. Hope they charged them a sh*tload

Dealership I work at gives out loaner vehicles while we get theirs repaired. One we just got back. from trashy

13. Looks fun.

A mom and two older kids refused to leave the kids play table so kids could play. They didn’t even look up from their phones. from mildlyinfuriating

14. WHAT?

Leaving your baby in the middle of the entrance (the parents were nowhere to be seen..) from trashy

15. That’s nice

Don’t use your kid’s mental illness to be an asshole from trashy

Do yourself a favor. Don’t be like these folks. We’ll all be better off…

The post These People Saw Bad Parenting and Shared It with the World appeared first on UberFacts.

15 Moms That Are Keeping Some Pretty Juicy Details from Their Kids

It’s a mom’s job to protect kids from the scarier, dirtier, less legal ways of the world – especially the ones they know about firsthand!

The moms below have some pretty dark secrets in their closets, so I hope their kids never go looking!

15. A smile can hide a lot…

My mother always smiled at me. I can’t remember seeing her without a smile. When I grew up I discover she have chronic crippling depression.

Edit: corrected my bad english. Thanks for the gold and silver, I wasn’t expecting that. Well I just visited my parents, I talked a lot with her and told her that she that I’m proud of her, and that she can count on me. I can’t talk about her depression directly but at least I hope that make her feel a little bit better. Despite her depression she’s the strongest person I know

14. That’s a doozy!

That my High School boyfriend and I had a son at 16 years old… We went through Catholic Family Services for an ” open adoption ” we both get updates on how he is doing… even though we are not involved anymore… Also… my son is included in my will…

13. Bonus brother!

Just found out last year that my mom got pregnant in college, the guy split as soon as he found out and she never saw him again. She decided to have the baby, avoided going home when she was showing, and gave it up for adoption. My grandparents never knew (they died a few years ago) and I found out due to an ancestry.com DNA test. My half-brother contacted me and we pieced it together. She was relieved that it all came out in the end, it had been weighing on her all these years (She’s in her 70s, I’m 40 now, and my new half-brother is 52 or so). Needless to say, it was a huge surprise, I never in a million years would have guessed at that.

EDIT: Just to clear up any confusion. My mom had my brother in college, and had me in her 30s.

EDIT: Also, no, this isn’t an advertisement, it really happened and I only mentioned the site because that’s how he found me. Otherwise I don’t think we’d have ever found out. My mom was relieved that it came out, but was too scared to have ever come out with it on her own.

12. Just a small little oops…

When I graduated college, my mom casually dropped the fact that she, a tiny little Asian woman, used to deal large quantities of marijuana when she was in high school, and once had to skip a basketball game because she accidentally took a duffel bag full of weed to school instead of her gym bag.

11. My ceiling is their floor. Poetic.

I don’t want my kids to know anything about how I was raised. I really don’t.

Like, I can’t watch anything family themed without crying. Most know kid movies leave me with a lump in my throat so big I could choke on it. And as they get older it’s harder to turn my face far enough for them not to see and twice as hard to not cry.

My ceiling is their floor and I really just don’t want them to have to handle grown up problems until they are grown ups.

My wild secret is that’s why we go for walks as a family rather than the movies. The movies are somewhere my husband takes them for special one on one time so it’s still a special thing that they get to do. But I won’t make them sit through their mom having a fucking break down over some “Ohana means family and family means nobody gets left behind” line.

10. It’s all about perspective I guess.

One Thanksgiving, my Grandmother confessed to the family that her father had run a Speakeasy, and that she would tend bar/mind the shop while he was out on liquor runs. I think she was pretty ashamed, but I think everyone found it pretty cool and didn’t understand why she kept it a secret so long.

9. The ID is the best part of the story.

When my girlfriend (wife now) and I were first together, she was gone all summer, came back to town and we got it on. However, it was also noon. And the windows were open. And she’s a screamer. We stopped in the middle because she saw some light dancing around on the ceiling. Looked down and a cop was shining a light in. Luckily he let us off with a warning to close the windows, however, due to her height he did have to ask for her ID to verify that she was old enough (she was 22). My kids probably never need to know that.

EDIT: To answer all of the questions of “why would the cops show up?” It was a noise complaint. Our rental was super close to a bunch of apartments so the open windows and the close wall made for a perfect echo chamber.

8. It’s a family tradition.

How much of my teens I spent high. But now weed’s socially acceptable in most cases, that’s not even a thing. I’m disappointed. It’s almost fun in a way to have something to shock your kids with. My own Mom is really vanilla and is very old school. Bet she’s probably hiding the fact she runs a local swingers club or something.

7. A lot to unpack.

That I met their dad on World of Warcraft when I was 16, and ran away to be with him two days before I turned 18- he is 11 years older than me. They can know the overview but boy the details of it are real shady, especially when I am going to have to teach them internet safety and online stranger danger.

I am now divorced and their dad has moved away, and we have a positive coparent relationship and though he’s not very involved we both just want the best for the kids. Which leads me into the fact I don’t want them to know how I feel about the relationship looking back and the manipulation and emotional abuse. I don’t want my daughter to know that I wanted to abort her because I was 20 and in college and knew there was no way we could support her- and that I was HEAVILY guilted into it by their dad because of his age (at 31) “being his last chance”.

We used to sell weed by the pound out of Grandma’s basement.

Dad loves all kinds of drugs, and I have sampled most just not the heavy ruin-your-life ones. Truly I just want to be a stoner at heart.

6. Not slingers.

It is our current situation, but we are swingers.

5. Some secrets are better off buried, if you ask me.

Daughter of a mother with a wild secret, my dad was abusive, an extreme alcoholic and hit her regularly so she kicked him in the balls so hard that he couldn’t have kids (after me, obviously). He’s dead now (drunk driving, he took 4 people with him). My aunt got tipsy and told me everything.

4. PTA qualified.

I used to be an escort. If being an escort doesn’t make me a member of the PTA, nothing will.

EDIT: Thank you so much for my first gold!

3. I’m not sure how this would make me feel.

Both my parents were very honest through out most of my life but but over the summer when I was 17 my mom had mentioned that before I was born that my dad wanted to get an abortion. I had figured out on my own why my dad wanted an abortion was because we didn’t make enough money to support another child. But my mother fought for me. So my dad ended up stop drinking and smoking to be able to financially support me.

2. I’m not sure that’s genetic.

This will get buried and this story is from my dad. When I was ~19 and visiting home from college, my dad and I stayed up getting piss drunk. When I told him about my love for psychedelics, he clapped and said, “I knew it!”. I asked why and he stated that, “…Your mom was the acid queen, and we learned she was pregnant with you when she was 4 months in. We were tripping for your first couple of months.”

1. Nothing to be ashamed of.

I guess that I was a stripper for a while, and worked at a bank the same time. Don’t think I would share that, but if I heard them talk down about strippers I’d probably educate them on what it’s really like. I did what I had to do to put food on the table and give them a good life. My immediate family knows, except my step dad, and my children’s dad knows. We sometimes talk about it but not really.

Good luck keeping those doors to the past closed, mamas!

The post 15 Moms That Are Keeping Some Pretty Juicy Details from Their Kids appeared first on UberFacts.

People Are Growing out Their Toenails for Fashion. Prepare Yourself.

Fingernails? I get it. You want them to be pretty and you want to show them off to the world.

Toenails? Yikes. Especially the really long ones. They’re nightmare fuel. Also, how is this practical? Seems like you would constantly be tearing them or breaking them. Ouch.

Are these toenails real or fake? We’re no 100% sure, but we can say with confidence that we are pretty creeped out.

Enjoy!

1. Wowzers

2. My eyes!

3. Please be careful

4. Hmmmm

5. Gross

6. Ugh

7. Why?

8. Something might start living under those

9. Horror show

10. Another angle

11. OMG

12. This takes the cake

13. Just puked

14. Large and in charge

15. Okay, we’ve all had enough

View this post on Instagram

One word: BRIGHT! #toes #feet #longtoenails

A post shared by Empress Alexa (@thebarefootempress) on

Okay, time to bleach my eyeballs.

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Check out These Funny Tweets About White Claw, the Hard Seltzer Drink That Is Sweeping the Nation

White Claw is an alcoholic hard seltzer drink that is blowing up all over the place right now. Everywhere you turn, you see something about White Claw.

The boozy drink has really been on people’s minds lately because of a funny parody video featuring YouTuber Trevor Wallace.

Here are some quality tweets about the fascination with White Claw.

1. The way it goes…

2. Boom!

3. Kind of sad

4. Yes!

5. LOL

6. That would be nice

7. Fight to the death

8. NO

9. Thanks for this

10. Get with the times!

11. That’s true love

12. Bonded for life

13. Amazing

14. Now it does

15. And, one more for good measure

Bottoms up!

The post Check out These Funny Tweets About White Claw, the Hard Seltzer Drink That Is Sweeping the Nation appeared first on UberFacts.

15 Tweets From Mid-2000s Kids

Ahhhhhh, remember those halycon days of yesteryear? You were a tween (or teen) and everything just made perfect sense! It was the mid-2000s and life was awesome! The internet was actually kind of fast finally, TV looked better than ever and companies sent you DVDs in the mail! Oh, and you also had no bills and really had no responsibilities.

Can’t we time travel to back then and just stay there forever?

No? Okay, we’ll just have to settle for these tweets.

16. What is reading?!?

15. Curls get the gurls…

14. This is so specific, but I feel like so many people did it!

13. Yeah, this is super “old”…

12. “Just be quiet Sharon! We don’t want the Tiffanys to know!”

11. Ahhh, to be 6 again…

10. Why do you let them do it today?

9. Come on, we’re all emo! Right franges!

8. So middle

7. My memories are proof of your shame. Always remember that.

6. He cared.

5. What am I supposed to do with these people?!

4. Oh yes. This was a thing we all did. ALL of us.

3. Okay, but The Cat In the Hat was particularly weird.

2. O_O

1. The coolest song of your youth.

See! That was like a teleportation back to the best years of your life.

You’re welcome!

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The longest marriage ever recorded…

The longest marriage ever recorded was 87 years long. Zelmyra and Herbert Fisher were married on May 13, 1924, and stayed together until Herbert passed away in 2011 at the age of 105. Zelmyra passed away two years later, also at the age of 105. Zelmyra and Herbert Fisher’s marriage withstood the Great Depression, World […]

John Lennon’s comment ‘More popular…

John Lennon’s comment ‘More popular than Jesus’ created a huge backlash in the US Bible belt, with one Texas radio station holding a large bonfire of Beatles albums only for a lightning bolt to strike its transmission tower the following day and sending the station temporarily off the air.