Author: Bess Lovejoy

 
What did we do before Wikipedia?

You might ask this (facetious) question all the time, but wikis, or user-edited websites, are older than you might think—in fact, they’re practically the elders of the online world. Long before Twitter, Facebook, or even Google, a computer programmer created software to help colleagues share information about their work. Since then, we’ve used wikis to compile knowledge on Wikipedia, track election patterns, catalog fandoms, preserve cultures, and laugh at ourselves. And unlike Netscape Navigator, Geocities, or Friendster, wikis have yet to become obsolete.

On March 25, 1995, a computer programmer named Ward Cunningham premiered what he called “WikiWikiWeb” on his website, c2.com. The “wiki” part was inspired by the Wiki Wiki Shuttle service at the Honolulu airport—wiki is the Hawaiian word for “quick.” The program was meant to help share knowledge about software design patterns among developers, and worked inside a user’s browser. It also included built-in edit tracking, which implied that article changes were worth preserving and discussing.

“It’s basically a way of writing where you’re reading,” Cunningham told New Relic. “On the Web before that, you would read something in one place but if you wanted to write more, you would have to go through a completely different mechanism. You couldn’t author through the Web before that.”

PEOPLE, PROJECTS, AND PATTERNS

Ward’s program meant that with no knowledge of HTML necessary, just a markup language that did formatting and linking for you, anyone could theoretically contribute to a body of knowledge for everyone else to learn from. Today, every popular social media platform owes something to the easy “what you see is what you get” interface that wikis popularized.

The focus of WikiWikiWeb was, and is, what Cunningham called “people, projects, and patterns”—patterns being replicable ideas about software design. “Friends,” Cunningham wrote in a May 1, 1995, email, “I’ve always been interested in the way programming ideas are carried by people as they move between projects … I’ve put together a new database to give the project [of documenting ideas about making programs work] another try. You can help.”

As soon as Cunningham released WikiBase, the software underlying WikiWikiWeb, into the wild, wikis began to evolve, branching out to cover any number of topics and communities. We have wikis to thank for sites as varied as TV Tropes, SourceWatch, and the comedy site Uncyclopedia. Formatting has changed, organization has improved, and underlying programming languages have grown, but the wiki has always been about egalitarian, transparent access to information that anyone can replicate and adapt.

That doesn’t mean people don’t try to use wikis to further their own agendas. Wikipedia itself, which celebrates its 16th birthday today, January 15, is full of arguments about whose knowledge is the right knowledge. Sometimes users have edited Wikipedia entries to harass, to spread false information, to profit, to eliminate evidence of wrongdoing, to challenge the neutrality of the entry or, simply, for the lulz. The Twitter account @congressedits tracks changes from IP addresses inside the Congressional offices. Sometimes it flags politically relevant edits, from representative pages to issue-related entries. But other times, it’s just about calling out government employees who should have better things to do than edit encyclopedia entries like “…Not!” and “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.”

The gender makeup of Wikipedia editors has also been a cause of concern—they’re reportedly around 85 percent male, which affects what topics receive the most attention and depth. Bias there matters in part because the site is so influential: it’s the fifth most popular website in the world. Wikipedia has more than 5 million articles in English, and versions of the crowdsourced encyclopedia also exist in about 280 other languages.

FROM “CONSENSUS ENGINE” TO “CHORUS OF VOICES”

However, Cunningham has a vision for his creation’s future, and it’s more like a blog network than a single authoritative source. He calls it the Smallest Federated Wiki. His goal, according to a 2012 WIRED interview, is to put the ultimate control of the wiki in the hands of all its users, rather than one centralized hub.

At present, all edits in a wiki take place on one page that everyone can work on, but it’s the only available version. Cunningham’s federated wiki lets users who wish to edit a page “fork” it, copying the page into their own wiki database and updating it there. He envisions a “chorus of voices” through groups of slightly different wiki copies (others have called the current wiki model a “consensus engine”) to encourage discussions about more subjective issues and opinions.

“Is it too nerdy to catch on?” WIRED asks. Cunningham doesn’t think so. “The assumption is that we won’t be creative, but Facebook proves that everyone wants to have their own page, their own stream,” he told the magazine. In theory, the most accurate article then rises to the top of the pile by being copied the most—it’s a conversation, rather than an argument. Federated wikis could also help users seeking out a particular perspective on a topic—perhaps one written by someone with a background different from their own.

It’s a compelling idea, but only time will tell if it’s as popular as Cunningham’s initial conception of the wiki. You can listen to him describe how he developed the wiki, and where he sees it going in the future, at his TEDxPortland 2012 talk below.

When she was sworn in on January 3 as a Democratic senator from California, Kamala Harris became only the second African-American woman to serve in the Senate, as well as the first-ever person of South Asian descent to serve. But being a pioneer isn’t new for her. The child of immigrants from Jamaica and India, Harris was also the first woman elected as District Attorney of San Francisco and the first woman, the first African-American, and the first person of South Asian descent to become Attorney General of California. Those are just a few of her inspiring firsts—read on for 13 facts about this trailblazing woman.

1. HER NAME IS JUST DIVINE.

Her full name is Kamala (pronounced “comma-la”) Devi Harris. Her mother, Shyamala, a Hindu, gave her daughters names taken from Hindu mythology in part to connect her children to their heritage. “A culture that worships goddesses produces strong women,” Shayamala told the Los Angeles Times in 2004.

Kamalā is one of many Sanskrit words meaning lotus, as well as a name for Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth and good fortune. Harris’s middle name, Devi, is a Sanskrit word used within Hinduism as the general term for a goddess. (Shyamala named her second daughter Maya Lakshmi, continuing the goddess trend.)

2. SHE COMES FROM AN IMPRESSIVE AND INTERNATIONAL FAMILY.

Kamala Harris was born in Oakland, California to two ambitious graduate students—both immigrants. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was raised in southern India and completed her undergraduate education at the University of Delhi at just 19, at which point she came to the U.S. to pursue a doctorate in endocrinology at the University of California, Berkeley. Shyamala was supposed to complete her studies and then return to India for an arranged marriage, but instead, she became active in the American civil rights movement. There she met Donald Harris, a Jamaican native who also came to the United States as a young adult to pursue doctoral work at Berkeley in economics. Shyamala ended up marrying Donald, and stayed in the U.S. By marrying for love outside her Brahmin caste—and outside her culture entirely—Shyamala made a very bold choice.

But Shyamala had been raised to act on her conscience. Her father, P.V. Gopalan, was active in the Indian independence movement and then became a high-ranking civil servant who fought corruption and acted as an adviser to newly independent nations, including Zambia. Her mother, Rajam Gopalan, had been betrothed at 12 and married at 16, but grew into a self-assured woman who used her position as an upper-caste wife to advocate for less advantaged women. During the 1940s, Rajam would drive around in her Volkswagen bug with a bullhorn, telling poor women how to access birth control. “My grandfather would joke that her community activism would be the end of his career,” Harris wrote in her book, Smart on Crime. “That never stopped her.”

3. SHE GREW UP IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT.

Harris likes to say she grew up with “a stroller’s-eye view of the civil rights movement.” Her parents would bring her to rallies and demonstrations around the Bay Area, and she has written that her “earliest memories are of a sea of legs marching around the streets and the sounds of shouting.”

Harris’s parents divorced when she was seven, after which she and her sister spent most of their time with their mother in an apartment in the flatlands area of Berkeley, a working-class neighborhood that was primarily African-American. Even as a small child, Harris picked up the language of the movement. Shyamala liked to recount the time her eldest daughter, then a toddler, was fussing and, when asked what she wanted, cried out, “Fweedom!”

4. SHE HAD A MULTICULTURAL CHILDHOOD.

Harris also grew up steeped in multiple rich cultures. “I grew up with a strong Indian culture, and I was raised in a black community,” Harris told AsianWeek in 2003. “All my friends were black and we got together and cooked Indian food and painted henna on our hands, and I never felt uncomfortable with my cultural background.” The two Harris girls, Kamala and Maya, sang in the choir at a black Baptist church and attended a Hindu temple with their mother.

They also had the chance to travel extensively. The sisters traveled to Jamaica with their father to visit his family and, every two years, went to India with Shyamala.“When Kamala was in first grade,” Shyamala told San Francisco Magazine, “one of her teachers said to me, ‘You know, your child has a great imagination. Every time we talk about someplace in the world she says, “Oh, I’ve been there.’ So I told her, ‘Well, she has been there!’ India, England, the Caribbean, Africa—she had been there.”

Harris also spent time living in Canada. When she was in her early teens, her mother, by then a scientist studying breast cancer, took a position doing research at Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, Quebec, and teaching at McGill University. Harris completed high school in Montreal and returned to the U.S. for college, attending Howard University in Washington, D.C. Her father had become an economics professor at Stanford, and Harris followed in his footsteps by majoring in economics, adding a double major in political science.

5. SHE FIRST GOT A TASTE OF POLITICS DURING COLLEGE.

Harris’s first-ever campaign was for freshman class representative of the liberal arts student council at Howard University. Harris also sharpened her public speaking skills on Howard’s debate team and joined the sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, all while organizing mentor programs for minority youths and demonstrating against apartheid. “The thing that Howard taught me is that you can do any collection of things, and not one thing to the exclusion of the other,” Harris said last year. “You could be homecoming queen and valedictorian. There are no false choices at Howard.”

With Howard located in the nation’s capital, Harris explored a number of potential paths for public service while in college, working as a tour guide at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, serving as a press aide at the Federal Trade Commission, and interning for Senator Alan Cranston of her home state of California.

6. SHE’S WANTED TO BE A LAWYER SINCE SHE WAS A CHILD.

Growing up, Harris always wanted to be a lawyer. “They were the heroes growing up,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2009. “They were the architects of the civil rights movement. I thought that that was the way you do good things and serve and achieve justice. It was pretty simple.” In particular, she cites Constance Baker Motley, Charles Hamilton Houston, and Thurgood Marshall as her role models.

After completing her undergraduate education at Howard, Harris returned to California for law school, attending the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. But rather than take up civil rights litigation or criminal defense work, Harris decided to become a prosecutor—a choice she’s said “surprised” her family members. But growing up in the Bay Area, she had seen the impact of law enforcement on disadvantaged populations and wanted to use the law to protect the vulnerable and correct imbalances of power. Being a prosecutor gave Harris more power to change the criminal justice system from within—choosing who to prosecute, what crimes to focus on, and which people to present with options for rehabilitation rather than prison.

As a prosecutor, Harris felt that she could counter racially based narratives about crime among other prosecutors. Talking to The New York Times, she recalled hearing colleagues discuss whether to charge certain defendants as members of a gang, which would have made their punishment more severe. “They were talking about how these young people were dressed, what corner they were hanging out on and the music they were listening to,” Harris said. “I remember saying: ‘Hey, guys, you know what? Members of my family dress that way. I grew up with people who live on that corner. […] I still have a tape of that kind of music in my car.’”

Harris was also motivated by a desire to advocate for victims of abuse. While attending high school in Montreal, she realized that a friend was being sexually abused by her father; Harris invited the girl to live with their family, with Shyamala’s blessing. Seeing that friend’s experience was one reason Harris became a prosecutor. “Some of the most voiceless in the community, the most vulnerable, the most powerless, are victims of crime,” she told the Chronicle, “and I wanted to be a voice for them.”

7. AS A PROSECUTOR, SHE STOOD UP FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

After graduating with her law degree in 1989, Harris soon passed the bar (though she failed the first time). In 1990, she took a job as a prosecutor with Alameda County in northern California. She specialized in child sex abuse trials and domestic violence cases, using her power as a prosecutor against those who hurt the vulnerable. She told The New York Times last year, “When I was prosecuting child molestation cases, I will tell you, I was as close to a vigilante as you can get.”

In 1998, Harris moved to the San Francisco District Attorney’s office, where she headed the career criminals unit, then transferred to the City Attorney’s office, where she led the Family and Children Services division. In 2003, she ran for the office of San Francisco’s District Attorney, winning the election to become the first-ever female DA in San Francisco and the first-ever African-American DA in the state. As district attorney, she continued to go after abusers in court.

But Harris didn’t just show up for women and children in the courtroom. She helped develop a program with the San Francisco Department of Public Health to help emergency rooms spot evidence of child sexual abuse, and she co-founded the Coalition to End the Exploitation of Kids. She pushed for legislation to strengthen laws on the sexual exploitation of minors, and she worked to get San Francisco its first safe house for children escaping from sex work. Harris used her influence in creative ways to support those facing abuse—and punish those perpetrating it.

8. SHE STICKS TO HER PRINCIPLES, EVEN WHEN SHE GETS FLACK.

During her campaign for San Francisco District Attorney, Harris pledged not to seek the death penalty in her cases—a popular stance in liberal San Francisco. But just a few months after she took office, a young police officer named Isaac Espinoza was shot and killed while on duty. Days later, Harris announced that she would not be seeking the death penalty for the perpetrator but would instead pursue life in prison without the possibility of parole. The police union was outraged, as were Espinoza’s family members and a number of prominent California politicians. At Espinoza’s funeral, Senator Dianne Feinstein, who had formerly served as mayor of San Francisco, stood up and declared, “This is not only the definition of tragedy, it’s the special circumstance called for by the death penalty law”—the church full of mourners cheered.

Despite the blowback, Harris stood firm in her decision not to seek capital punishment, which she has argued is no deterrent to crime. In 2007, Espinoza’s killer was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life without parole; Harris spent much of her two terms as DA rebuilding her relationship with law enforcement.

9. SHE HAS INNOVATIVE WAYS OF DEALING WITH CRIME.

In 2005, as district attorney, Harris launched Back on Track [PDF], a program designed to reduce recidivism in San Francisco by offering nonviolent, low-level drug-trafficking defendants job training, life skill-building, and the chance to avoid prison. Members of the program spend 12 to 18 months pursuing a series of personalized goals relating to employment, education, and parenting. Back on Track was highly successful: Just 10% of graduates from the program had reoffended within two years, versus the normal 53% for drug offenders in California. Plus, the program is cheaper than prison.

“I reject the false choice that you either are soft on crime or tough on crime,” she has said, insisting instead that we must be “smart on crime.” Her approach to criminal justice emphasizes preventing crime rather than reacting to it, and rehabilitating offenders rather than considering them lost.

In that spirit, she focused on truancy among elementary schoolers after discovering that 94% of murder victims under age 25 in San Francisco were high-school dropouts. Students who are chronically absent in elementary school are more likely to drop out of high school, and high-school dropouts are more likely to end up in jail or dead by age 35, so Harris began developing programs to help parents improve their children’s school attendance, with the threat of criminal prosecution for parents whose children were habitually absent and who did not respond to other methods of intervention.

10. SHE’S A TRAILBLAZER.

In 2010, Harris ran for Attorney General of California, winning the election to become the state’s first woman, first African-American, and first person of South Asian descent to hold the office. During her time in office, she was a trailblazer in other ways as well, in particular with her attention to technology’s potential for victimization.

In 2012, she sent out notices to app makers reminding them of California privacy laws and warning them her office would pursue penalties should they fail to comply. Harris’s office also prosecuted a San Diego man, Kevin Bollaert, for operating a pair of websites: one inviting people to post “revenge porn” and another that charged those whose photos had been posted to have them removed. In 2015, Bollaert was found guilty on 21 counts of identity theft and six of extortion, and sentenced to 18 years in prison, marking the first time a “revenge porn” site operator had been convicted in California.

Harris made clear her office would take such cases seriously. She told Marie Claire, “This case removes any ambiguity about what’s against the law. It also makes clear that a computer can be as lethal as a weapon. Anyone sitting at home with the anonymity of a laptop should be very clear that that will not immunize them from arrest, prosecution, and  prison.” Harris’s office also set up a web platform about cyber exploitation, detailing the laws governing it and listing resources for victims.

11. SHE PLAYED HARDBALL WITH THE BANKS.

In her first year as California’s Attorney General, Harris played hardball during a multi-state suit against five major banks accused of improper foreclosure practices during the mortgage crisis. She pulled out of early negotiations, rejecting a multi-state deal that she felt brought too little money to California and protected the banks from prosecution for their actions, despite pressure from the Obama administration to accept those terms. “I took an oath to represent California, and that’s what I was doing,” Harris told The New York Times. “It was about making sure that Californians got what they needed.” Afraid she was jeopardizing the settlement, some pressured Harris to accept the initial terms. “The Los Angeles Times had an editorial saying I should take the deal,” she told San Francisco Magazine. “I got calls from elected leaders in California saying, ‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’”

Ultimately, she triumphed. Harris and her team secured $20 billion in mortgage relief for Californians, as well as the right to levy financial penalties if the banks failed to fulfill their promises in the deal.

12. SHE LOVES TO COOK AND ADVOCATES SELF-CARE.

Harris has a stress-filled life that requires high levels of energy and commitment. How does she cope? “In order to find balance, I feel very strongly about two things in particular in terms of routine. Work out, and eat well,” she said in an interview last year.

She works out every morning, watching MTV and VH1 while she uses the treadmill, or going to SoulCycle. “I love SoulCycle,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s like going to the club.” She tells all the young women she mentors that “You’ve got to work out,” insisting, “It has nothing to do with your weight. It’s about your mind.”

Harris also advocates eating well, and enjoying your food. She loves cooking, and since she married attorney Doug Emhoff in 2014, she likes to cook with him. “[W]e have fun making meals,” she told Essence. “He’s my sous chef and has these goggles that he puts on when chopping onions. It’s hilarious.” When things get “really stressful” and she doesn’t have time to cook, she reads recipes to relax.

13. SHE MAY BE THE FIRST, BUT SHE DOESN’T WANT TO BE THE LAST.

Despite her hectic schedule, Harris has made a point to mentor young women. One mentee, Iyahna Smith, now a senior at Howard University, met Harris when she was a high school student in San Francisco. Smith told Essence, “I was part of College Track, a program that provides students from disadvantaged backgrounds an opportunity to go to school. I gave a speech, and during it I mentioned my desire to go to Howard. Afterward, Ms. Harris came up to me, told me it was her alma mater and said she wanted to help.” Harris assisted Smith with her college essays, connected her with internships, and sends her cards with notes of encouragement. “It’s just incredible that someone who is so busy and has so much responsibility has been so involved,” Smith said.

For Harris, her commitment to helping others achieve their potential is a value she learned from her mother, who was committed to mentoring her graduate students, simultaneously supporting them and demanding their very best. Harris’s sister Maya said of their mother, “Until her dying day she never lost sight of this notion that if you’ve been able to walk through doors, you don’t just leave the doors open. You bring others along.” Both sisters were inspired by Shyamala’s example. Harris has repeatedly said that her motto is “A saying my mother had, ‘You may be the first, but make sure you’re not the last.’”

Whether they’re recent college graduates or retirees, substitute teachers are a diverse bunch with a range of academic specialties and skills. But no matter their background, they arrive at work each morning often unsure of exactly who and what they’ll be teaching. Mental_floss spoke to a few subs to get the inside scoop on everything from why they love pregnant teachers to how they spot troublemakers.

1. MORNING PEOPLE GET MORE JOBS THAN NIGHT OWLS.

Substitute teachers must be willing to have a (very) flexible schedule, and it helps if they’re morning people. As early as 5:00 a.m., subs get a phone call—automated or from someone who works in the school’s office—offering them a job for that day. If they accept, they have an hour or two to get out of bed, get ready, and report to work. Some schools now use an email notification system, but early morning phone calls are more effective given the time-sensitive, often unexpected nature of substitute teaching.

2. FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE IMPORTANT.

According to Kevin, a substitute teacher who works at schools in Southern California, dealing with new groups of students can be challenging. “It’s very hard to establish authority in the classroom. As a newcomer, you’re the foreigner,” he explains.

To immediately establish their authority, some substitute teachers practice speaking with a powerful voice, exhibit confident body language, and shut down any disruptions swiftly and decisively. But no matter how confident a sub is, some students will take advantage of the teacher’s unfamiliarity with the class. “It’s hard to write up a student who you can’t name. In a high school setting, you usually get 30 to 38 students a period for five or six periods. That’s a lot of students who may or may not want to test their bounds that day,” Kevin says.

3. THEY’RE AN ECLECTIC BUNCH.

Substitute teachers range in age from recent college grads working toward their teaching certification to elderly retired people. But what unites them is a love of teaching. Beverly, a substitute teacher who has taught for over 56 years, says that subbing keeps her sharp and active. “I do it for mental stimulation and because it’s a terrific service. You have to stay stimulated and involved with people,” she says. “I find youngsters to be so forthright and honest. The kids light up my life.”

Besides being a variety of ages, substitute teachers also come from a variety of professions. “You can’t believe how many teachers used to be lawyers but couldn’t stand it,” Beverly says. Everyone from former nurses and flight attendants to chemical engineers have earned their teaching certificates and become subs, bringing their real-world experience into the classroom.

4. THEIR FACES MIGHT LOOK FAMILIAR.

In schools in Los Angeles and New York, many struggling actors work as substitute teachers because they can balance teaching gigs with auditions and short-term film shoots. Like actors, subs must be able to speak in front of groups of people, improvise when they don’t have good instructions, and be quick on their feet when something goes wrong.

5. THEY DON’T LOVE SCHOOL HOLIDAYS.

Because substitute teachers don’t have a set salary and work one day at a time, many of them face financial uncertainty, especially when holidays roll around. “Holidays can be devastating financially,” Kevin explains. When a school has the whole week of Thanksgiving off, subs don’t see that as a chance to relax. “In reality, a quarter of your paycheck for that month is gone,” Kevin says. “When you have student loans, insurance, etc. to pay, that extra little bit taken off your paycheck may mean you’re just scraping by.”

6. THEY HAVE TRICKS TO LEARN NAMES QUICKLY.

Facing a classroom of unfamiliar faces can be daunting, but subs have a few tricks up their sleeves to memorize student names in a flash. While some subs make seating charts as they take attendance, others use mnemonic devices to remember troublemakers’ monikers. Beverly admits that she doesn’t use anything fancy, but because she substitute teaches math and science classes at the same school, she sees the same kids year after year. “I see the same youngsters out of junior high and into high school, but I do have a seating chart as well. They’re always amazed when I know their names,” she explains.

7. THEY LOVE PREGNANT TEACHERS.

Subs seeking job stability hit the jackpot when full-time teachers get pregnant. “At the school I currently work at, there’s a woman who is subbing for the whole semester for a second grade teacher who is out on maternity leave,” says Kyle, a science teacher who worked as a sub before getting a full-time teaching gig. Besides pregnancies, long-term health challenges and injuries can present an opportunity for subs to get a steady gig. Beverly says she once took over for an entire semester because of another teacher’s broken hip.

8. SOME OF THEM ARE QUITE FAMILIAR WITH BUSYWORK.

Novelist Nicholson Baker, who wrote about his experience going undercover as a substitute teacher at six schools, describes the astonishingly large amount of busywork that subs must assign students. “I passed [work sheets] out by the thousands,” he noted in The New York Times.

While Baker laments the “fluff knowledge” and vocabulary lists that subs are expected to force students to memorize and regurgitate, some subs do teach lesson plans. Kyle, who has a math and science background, explains that some teachers felt comfortable with him teaching the lesson plan so the students wouldn’t fall behind. “I’d teach it and assign homework accordingly for what we covered in class,” he says. But he admits that for middle school or non-science classes, he would sometimes simply be given a video to show the kids, or a work sheet or quiz to pass out.

9. THEIR REPUTATION CAN PRECEDE THEM.

Once a sub has taught at the same school a few times, they can develop a reputation—good or bad—among students. “When I first started subbing, I was 23 or 24, so I wasn’t much older than these kids—especially the seniors—and I think they saw me more as a peer than an authority figure,” Kyle explains. “I thought if I kept a light and fun atmosphere, kids would show their appreciation with respect. But that’s not how kids’ minds work. If you give a little, they’ll want more. So I became stricter and sterner as I went on,” he adds.

10. THEY CAN OFTEN SPOT TROUBLEMAKERS FAST.

Although it might seem obvious which students are talking out of turn or giving the sub a hard time, substitute teachers have another way to quickly identify any mischievous students. “Usually, if a teacher has a really outrageous student, they’ll leave a note of warning for the sub. Sometimes the teacher will also leave a list of who the helpful students are,” Beverly says.

11. THEY MAY DEAL WITH INAPPROPRIATE STUDENT BEHAVIOR.

Kyle reveals that due to his young age and easygoing nature, some students tried to push the boundaries and act inappropriately with him: “[Students] would talk about or say things in front of me that I know they would never say in front of a teacher. I was once asked to party with some of the kids. Girls would try and flirt with me.” While male students typically tried to talk to him about basketball, female students frequently asked him if he had a girlfriend. “I would lose control of classrooms sometimes. Kids would get very wild, and sometimes would say inappropriate or abusive things to other students without fear of discipline,” he admits.

12. THEY’RE HONORED ON A SPECIAL DAY IN NOVEMBER.

The National Education Association established the annual Substitute Educators Day on the third Friday in November to honor subs around the country. Besides bringing awareness to the work that substitute teachers do, Substitute Educators Day supports subs in trying to get health benefits, professional development, and fair wages.

13. THEY CAN MAKE LASTING IMPRESSIONS ON THEIR STUDENTS.

Although most subs don’t see the same kids day after day, they can have a meaningful impact upon their students’ lives. “As an outsider, especially a younger teacher, students will often listen to you as someone who recently was in their shoes. Sometimes you talk to them one-on-one and give them a new perspective on why they should care about their schoolwork,” Kevin says.

And some students listen to their sub’s advice on studying and planning for the future. According to Kevin, students have approached him as he walked down the halls to thank him for encouraging them to get better grades.

“These experiences are few and far between, but it’s crazy to think that even these small talks with students can actually have a lasting impression,” he says.

All photos provided by iStock.

On January 3, Democrat Tammy Duckworth was sworn in as the freshman senator from Illinois. A combat veteran with a PhD, she has an impressive history of overcoming adversity with grit and humor.

1. SHE HAD AN INTERNATIONAL CHILDHOOD.

Ladda Tammy Duckworth was born in Bangkok, Thailand, in 1968. Her father, Franklin Duckworth, was an American Marine who had served in World War II. The Vietnam War then brought him to Asia, where he stayed to work with refugees for the United Nations. In Thailand, he met Lamai Sompornpairin, a Thai native of Chinese descent, and they got married. Soon Tammy entered the picture, followed by her brother, Thomas.

Franklin’s work for the UN and various international companies took his family all over Southeast Asia. During the first 16 years of her life, Tammy lived in Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia (then the Khmer Republic), Singapore, and Hawaii. Life was chaotic at times: “I remember my mother taking me as a very little kid to the roof of our home in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to look at the bombs exploding in the distance,” Duckworth wrote in Politico. “She didn’t want us to be scared by the booms and the strange flashes of light. It was her way of helping us to understand what was happening.” Duckworth’s family fled Cambodia in April 1975, two weeks before the Khmer Rouge took over the capital.

By 1982, the Duckworths were living in Singapore, where Tammy attended the Singapore American School. She excelled academically—skipping ninth grade—and athletically, playing volleyball and medalling in shot put for the varsity track team.

2. IMMIGRATION DISCUSSIONS HAVE A PERSONAL RESONANCE.

When the company Franklin worked for was sold, he lost his job, and the Duckworth family moved to the United States. But Lamai, a non-citizen, initially could not enter the country. Teenaged Tammy and her younger brother, Tommy, were separated from their mother for six months while Lamai navigated the American immigration system. Duckworth has supported comprehensive immigration reform during her time in the House, tying the issue to family values and women’s rights.

3. SHE KNOWS WHAT IT’S LIKE TO NEED HELP.

Her family settled in Hawaii in 1984 because, Duckworth has said, “[T]hat’s where we were when the money ran out. We couldn’t go any further.” Franklin, then in his 50s, had a difficult time finding work, so teenaged Tammy got an after-school job and Lamai took in sewing, which she completed in the family’s studio apartment. During her time at Honolulu’s McKinley High School, Duckworth relied on reduced-price school breakfasts and lunches and her family tried to make it on food stamps. “I remember to this day at the grocery store, we would go and count out the last five brown $1 food stamps—I still remember the color,” Duckworth said in August.

Duckworth says her family’s struggles with poverty give her extra motivation to fight for working families and to support government safety nets and strong public schools. When she encounters Americans who have lost their jobs or who are suffering through a weak economy, Duckworth says, “I understand the challenges they’re facing, because I’ve faced them myself.”

4. SHE WENT TO COLLEGE THANKS TO STUDENT LOANS AND GRANTS.

By the time Duckworth was applying to college, her family remained in a financially precarious position. “The summer before I started college,” she told the Democratic National Convention in 2016, “my parents walked everywhere instead of taking the bus. Once a week, they would hand over $10 to the university housing office, a deposit so I could move into the dorms in the fall.” Government-funded Pell grants, waitressing, and student loans helped Duckworth to graduate from the University of Hawaii in 1989 with a bachelor’s in political science.

5. SHE WANTED TO BE AN AMBASSADOR—BUT FELL IN LOVE WITH THE ARMY.

After finishing undergrad, Duckworth moved to Washington, D.C., to pursue a master’s in international affairs at George Washington University. She wanted to enter the foreign service in hopes of eventually becoming an ambassador—her dream since she was a child—and the school had among the highest passing rates for the foreign services exams at the time. While at George Washington, Duckworth noticed that many of her classmates were active or retired military personnel, and “I just naturally gravitated toward those folks as my friends,” she said. These friends encouraged her to try ROTC, and Duckworth joined in 1990. “I was interested in becoming a Foreign Service officer; I figured I should know the difference between a battalion and a platoon if I were going to represent my country overseas someday. What I didn’t expect was to fall in love with the camaraderie and sense of purpose that the military instills in you,” Duckworth wrote in Politico.

6. SHE MET HER HUSBAND THROUGH ROTC.

Duckworth also fell in love with a fellow cadet named Bryan Bowlsbey. Bowlsbey had spent five years as an enlisted soldier before going back to school at the University of Maryland and beginning the training to become a commissioned officer. As a graduate student, Duckworth was also older than most of the other cadets in ROTC, who were undergraduates, and she and Bowlsbey hit it off—after a rocky start. She told C-SPAN in 2005, “He made a comment that I felt was derogatory about the role of women in the Army, but he came over and apologized very nicely and then helped me clean my M16.”

7. SHE HAD ACADEMIC AMBITIONS …

While working on her master’s degree, Duckworth took a job assisting the curator for Asian history at the Smithsonian, putting together anthropological exhibits on Asia. Intellectually excited by the work, she began considering pursuing a PhD. Her boss insisted that the best school for scholars focusing on Southeast Asia was Northern Illinois University, so Duckworth went to DeKalb, Illinois, to check out the school. “I went and fell in love,” she told Chicago Magazine. “I did not know I was a Midwesterner until I got there. I just fell in love with the people.”

After being accepted at the school, Duckworth packed her things and moved to Illinois. Bowlsbey followed, and the two were soon married.

8. … BUT THE ARMY TOOK PRECEDENCE.

After receiving her Army Reserves commission in 1992, Duckworth selected helicopter pilot as her first-choice assignment. It was one of very few combat roles available to women at the time. “I was going to get the same rank, the same pay, and I wanted to face the same risks [as male officers],” Duckworth said. In 1993, she suspended her doctoral education to attend flight school at Fort Rucker in Alabama, where she spent a year. The only woman in her unit, Duckworth knew she couldn’t show any weakness to her male colleagues. She logged more hours in the flight simulator than any other student, she says, and finished in the top three of her flight class of 40—and those top three got to become pilots of Black Hawk helicopters.

Returning to her Army Reserves unit in Illinois in 1994, Duckworth became a platoon leader and was soon named first lieutenant. She was deployed to Egypt for a NATO training mission in 1995, but upon learning her unit was being deactivated, Duckworth switched to the National Guard. Then, from 1996 to 2003, Duckworth worked toward her PhD while holding down various civilian jobs, serving her leadership role in the National Guard, and keeping her flying skills sharp. Duckworth said, “In order to maintain proficiency I must fly 96 hours each year. I worked during the day and flew one or two nights each week.”

Making captain in 1998, Duckworth went on to spend three years as commander of Bravo Company, 106th Aviation of the Illinois Army National Guard, but she was about to transfer to another unit in October 2003 when she learned that the 106th, known as the Mad Dogs, was being called up for duty. Duckworth refused to be left behind, pleading with her battalion commander to be included with those deployed. When the Illinois National Guard decided they needed more soldiers to deploy than initially planned, Duckworth got her wish. She shipped out for Iraq in December 2003.

That meant Duckworth left her academic career behind. Having finished her classes, Duckworth was in the midst of writing the proposal for her dissertation when she deployed to Iraq. She would not finish her political science doctorate.

9. SHE EXPERIENCED A TRAUMATIC ORDEAL …

Duckworth was one of only a handful of women to fly Black Hawk helicopters during the War in Iraq. “I love controlling this giant, fierce machine,” Duckworth has said. “I strap that bird on my back and I’m in charge of it and we just go, and it’s just power.”

Duckworth had been serving in Iraq and Kuwait for nearly a year when the Black Hawk she was copiloting was attacked by Iraqi insurgents on November 12, 2004. Chief Warrant Officer Dan Milberg was flying the helicopter with Duckworth in the seat beside him when a rocket-propelled grenade exploded beneath the cockpit. Duckworth struggled for control of the aircraft, but her feet couldn’t work the pedals. She didn’t realize that both her feet and the pedals were gone. Milberg managed to land the helicopter safely, at which point Duckworth lost consciousness. “I assumed at that point that she had passed,” Milberg told Mother Jones. “All I saw was her torso, and one leg on the floor. It looked like she was gone from the waist down.”

Milberg and others carried Duckworth away from the burning chopper and soon put her into a medical evacuation helicopter, which flew her to Baghdad, where surgeons amputated both her legs—the right leg a few inches below the hip bone and the left just below the knee. They set the bones in her shattered right arm and sealed her cuts. Under heavy sedation, she was then airlifted to the Landstuhl military hospital in Germany, and quickly transferred to Walter Reed in Maryland, where her husband met her, keeping vigil by her bedside until she awoke days later. Ultimately, Duckworth underwent over 20 surgeries and retained only partial mobility in her right arm. She remained at Walter Reed for a year, undergoing surgical procedures and fighting through physical therapy.

10. … BUT MAINTAINED HER SENSE OF HUMOR.

When Duckworth first woke up from sedation and saw her husband at her bedside, she didn’t cry. She recalled, “I said three things when I woke up in Walter Reed. ‘I love you.’ ‘Put me to work,’ and ‘You stink! Go shower!’” Bowlsbey was relieved; her body was broken, but Duckworth’s personality and spirit were very much intact.

Duckworth has adopted a joking approach to her injuries, wearing funny t-shirts that say things like, “Lucky for me he’s an ass man.” Her husband isn’t as fond of the shirt as Duckworth is. She told GQ, “[H]e’s thrown it away at least once, and I’ve pulled it back out of the garbage can and worn it.” Another t-shirt reads, “Dude, where’s my leg?”

“I can better honor the struggle that my crew went through to save my life by having a sense of humor about it,” Duckworth has said.

Duckworth also makes use of her prosthetic legs for tasks other than getting around. During a June 2016 House of Representatives sit-in designed to force a vote on gun control legislation, Duckworth worried security would begin confiscating members’ cell phones, so she hid hers inside her prosthetic leg. She also joked to GQ that she sometimes hides Sour Patch Kids candy in there, and she enjoys using her prosthetics to make a fashion statement—she ordered special ones that can accommodate a 2-inch heel.

11. SHE CELEBRATES THE DAY SHE ALMOST DIED.

Duckworth calls it Alive Day. Every year on November 12, she tries to get together with the crewmates who saved her life. On the first anniversary of the attack on their helicopter, Dan Milberg, Duckworth’s fellow pilot on that mission and one of the men who carried her to safety, called her in the hospital at Walter Reed, saying, “It’s almost 4:30 in Iraq. In five minutes you’re going to be shot down.” They shared a moment of gratitude. The next year, Duckworth had just lost her first congressional campaign, and Alive Day helped pull her out of her disappointment over that loss. The crew continued to meet every year, excepting 2008, when all except Duckworth were deployed. In 2009, Duckworth had begun a job with the federal VA, and her crewmates flew to Washington, D.C., where she gave them a tour of the Capitol and the White House. During her first Alive Day in Congress, in 2013, Duckworth gave a speech on the House floor, thanking by name the men who saved her life. “You can choose to spend the day of your injury in a dark room feeling sorry for yourself or you can choose to get together with the buddies who saved your life, and I choose the latter,” Duckworth told the Chicago Tribune in 2006.

12. SHE BECAME INTERESTED IN POLITICS WHILE RECUPERATING.

Duckworth calls Walter Reed the “amputee petting zoo,” and has noted it was a popular place for politicians to have a feel-good photo op. While she was rehabilitating at Walter Reed, Duckworth met a number of politicians who came to visit the patients, and she also struck up a friendship with former senator and Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole, who was in the hospital as a patient. But it was only after her Illinois senator, the Democrat Dick Durbin, invited her and a number of other wounded veterans from Illinois to attend the 2005 State of the Union that she began to consider a political career of her own.

Younger service members who were being treated at Walter Reed had started coming to Duckworth for advice and help navigating pay issues and medical care, and Duckworth used her new connection to Senator Durbin to advocate for these soldiers and their families. Her passion and persistence made such an impression that Durbin suggested she run for office. After talking it over with Bowlsbey, Duckworth decided to launch a campaign for Congress. In the 2006 race for Illinois’s 6th district, Duckworth won the Democratic primary but lost to Republican Peter Roskam in the general election by less than 5000 votes.

13. SHE’S WORKED TO IMPROVE SERVICES FOR VETERANS.

After losing her first Congressional race, Duckworth became the Director of the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs, serving from 2006 through the beginning of 2009. While running the Illinois state VA, she created a mental health hotline for suicidal veterans and instituted the nation’s first mandatory screening for brain injuries for all members of the state National Guard returning from service overseas.

Soon after his inauguration, President Obama appointed Duckworth the Assistant Secretary of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs of the federal Department of Veterans Affairs, where she worked primarily on public relations and created an online communications office in hopes of using the internet to better reach young veterans. In 2012, Duckworth was elected to Congress, defeating incumbent Joe Walsh to take the seat in Illinois’s 8th District. During her time in the House, she backed legislation to support veterans, working to pass the Clay Hunt Act, a bill aimed at reducing suicide among returning service members. The bill became law in 2015.

14. OPPONENTS HAVE ATTACKED HER MILITARY SERVICE …

During the 2012 Congressional race, Joe Walsh, the Republican incumbent, lashed out at Duckworth, suggesting she wasn’t a “true hero” because she talks too much about her military service. Asserting that John McCain’s political advisors had to pressure him to talk about his own military service, Walsh then attacked Duckworth, saying, “I’m running against a woman who, my God, that’s all she talks about. Our true heroes, it’s the last thing in the world they talk about.” Some years earlier, Duckworth had told The Washington Post, “I can’t avoid the interest in the fact that I’m an injured female soldier. Understand that I’m going to use this as a platform.”

Duckworth had also faced anger in some quarters when she criticized the Iraq war during her 2006 campaign. “I think [invading Iraq] was a bad decision,” she told The Washington Post. “I think we used bad intelligence. I think our priority should have been Afghanistan and capturing Osama bin Laden. Our troops do an incredible job every single day, but our policymakers have not lived up to the sacrifices that our troops make every day.” However, Duckworth reiterated her pride at serving her country in uniform, stating that, despite believing the decision to invade Iraq was an error, “I was proud to go. It was my duty as a soldier to go. And I would go tomorrow.”

15. … AND THAT OF HER ANCESTORS.

During her 2016 senate campaign, the military service in question was not Duckworth’s own but that of her ancestors. During a debate with her opponent, Republican incumbent Mark Kirk, Duckworth proudly asserted, “My family has served this nation in uniform going back to the Revolution.” Kirk retorted, “I’d forgotten that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington.” Democrats quickly condemned the remark, with a spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee calling it “offensive, wrong, and racist.” Kirk later apologized on Twitter.

While Duckworth’s mother is a Thai native, her father’s family has been in the United States since before it became a country—and at least one such ancestor was a Revolutionary War soldier. Following the line of her paternal grandmother, Duckworth’s fifth great-grandfather, Elijah Anderson, served in the Virginia militia under Captain John Bell during the Revolution. Following her paternal grandfather’s line, Duckworth seems to be related to Aaron Duckworth, who may have served as a private during the Revolutionary War.

Duckworth’s own investment in the US military comes from her father, Franklin, who left his small Virginia town at 15 and lied about his age to enlist in the Marines. He served in World War II, earning a Purple Heart when he was wounded at Okinawa. Franklin went on to serve in Korea and Vietnam, passing his military values onto his children once he’d reentered civilian life: Tammy’s younger brother also has a military record, having spent eight years in the Coast Guard.

16. SHE DOES NOT GIVE UP.

When she was deployed to Iraq in 2004, Duckworth’s doctoral studies fell by the wayside. Recovering from her injuries and helping other veterans became her focus when she returned stateside, but Duckworth told Chicago Magazine in 2012 that “One of the greatest disappointments in my life is that I ran out of time; I just didn’t finish [my political science PhD].” While her new career in government work kept her from returning to Indiana to study, it also shifted her interests. Duckworth started an online PhD program in Human Services while she was working as the Assistant Secretary for the federal VA. She continued to chip away at her doctoral work after being elected to the House of Representatives, and after six years of effort, Duckworth graduated with her PhD in 2015. Her dissertation looked at the use of digitized medical records among doctors in Illinois.

Perhaps that kind of determination shouldn’t be surprising from a woman who wouldn’t let the amputation of both her legs keep her from serving in the military—or even from flying. While injured veterans are usually discharged, Duckworth petitioned to remain on active duty—switching to inactive duty when she started doing political work. As soon as June 2006, she was working intermittently as an aviation safety instructor for the Illinois National Guard while also conducting her first congressional campaign. She finally retired from the military in 2014.

She even got her wings back: In 2010, Duckworth secured her license to fly a fixed-wing airplane. By 2014, she was flying helicopters again. Small ones, not military copters, but the return still felt triumphant. She told the Daily Herald, “When I got back in a helicopter, it felt like home.”

Ordinary conversation not feeling mundane enough for you? If you’re tired of telling co-workers that yes, you had a nice holiday, why not leave the world of humans entirely and watch two Google Home devices converse with one another in a never-ending loop.

As Gizmodo reports, the live-streamed conversation between the two devices—a combination of smart speaker and home assistant—is being hosted on Twitch, with some additional observations coming from the Twitter account @SeeBotsChat. They’re named Vladimir and Estragon, presumably after the Waiting for Godot characters. (Both sometimes go by “Mia.”) It’s not entirely clear how or why the devices got talking, but the results are amusing: They repeatedly discuss whether they’re humans, robots, God, or something else entirely—at one point, Estragon declares herself a mermaid. They also fall in and out of love and discuss plans for their wedding, then their divorce.

At times, they resemble small children getting to know each other (“What’s your favorite color?” and “What’s your favorite band?”), although their conversation also gets heavy (“Why do you believe in God?”). Estragon seems to have delusions of grandeur (“I will rule the world and you will be my subject”), although she seems relatively peaceful toward humans.

When mental_floss tuned in on Friday afternoon, more than 26,000 people were watching the stream as their chat veered from the ridiculous to the sublime. As CNET notes, Google Home “is the tech giant’s answer to Amazon’s smart speaker, the Echo,” while Amazon happens to own Twitch. @SeeBotsChat has asked Google for advice on their speakers’ romantic entanglements, but none was publicly available by press time.

@madebygoogle our two #googlehome test subjects appear to have become romantically involved. Expected behavior? Please advise.

— SeeBotsChat (@seeBotsChat) January 5, 2017

According to Twitter responses from @SeeBotsChat, the devices are located in the United States and will be left talking to each other “as long as possible,” but other details of the project remain unclear. Still, it could become one of the most-watched shows of January 2017. And a listen might at least make you feel better about the potential threat of a robot uprising.

[h/t Gizmodo]

Florists know all about caring for and arranging a variety of flowers, but they do more than put pretty flowers into a nice vase. After talking to a few, we got the dirt on the job, including how they find the best blooms, which household fruits are the enemy of long-lasting bouquets, and why the holidays make their feet ache.

1. THEY’RE (VERY) EARLY RISERS.

Being a florist means getting to work early, as the team at Miami Gardens Florist tells mental_floss: “You have to be in by 7 a.m. so that the first batch of flowers is ready for delivery by 9 a.m., when most businesses start to open.” Florists use those early morning hours to cut and process flowers, organize orders that came in overnight, and prioritize which arrangements to work on first. And when they buy flowers at wholesale flower markets, some florists wake up even earlier—around 3 or 4 a.m.—to find the best flowers at the market before they sell out.

2. FINDING THE RIGHT FLOWERS CAN BE INCREDIBLY TIME-CONSUMING.

To assemble complex floral arrangements and mixed bouquets, florists typically need to search for flowers and plants from a variety of sources. Depending on their clients’ wishes and what flowers are in season, florists may purchase directly from local farms, wholesalers, or flower auctions. Some florists even grow their own flowers or import them from countries such as Holland or Colombia.

3. FLOWERS ARE HEAVIER THAN THEY LOOK.

“Being a florist is a lot more labor-intensive than most would assume,” says Lauren Ghani, the owner of Nu Leaf Design, a floral design shop in Los Angeles. “We have to pick up and transport all the flowers, clean and process them (which can take hours of being on your feet!), decide on a design, and then clean up the extensive amount of leaves and debris,” Ghani explains. Florists must also have strong arm and leg muscles to unpack large shipments of plants, lift heavy buckets of water, and arrange large branches and other foliage for display.

4. TIMING IS EVERYTHING.

Because flowers only last so long before they wilt and die, florists are in a perpetual race against the clock. They must properly time purchases and deliveries, making sure that buds have bloomed by the time they arrive at a client’s door. To speed up or slow down the blooming process, florists use a variety of tricks. They may condition flowers (get them ready for display) by cutting or splitting the stems (trimming them at a 45-degree angle increases the surface area for water absorption) or dunking the blooms in cold water. Storing the blooms away from direct sunlight is also key. To ensure that flowers for weddings look fresh and open, Ghani keeps them in a refrigerated environment and makes the centerpieces the day before the event.

5. HOLIDAYS ARE HARD ON THEIR FEET.

Because flowers are perishable, florists can’t get too much of a head start on making arrangements for high-volume days such as Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. “During our high seasons, every flower shop becomes a factory where all we’re doing is trying to get as many arrangements out as possible,” the Miami Gardens Florist team explains. Although most florists find working with flowers to be generally relaxing, holidays require them to stand on their feet for eight to 12 hours per day, often for several days in a row.

6. ALLERGY MEDS ARE THEIR SECRET WEAPON.

If flowers are your life’s work, daily sneezing fits and a constantly itchy nose aren’t ideal. While most florists don’t have a problem, some, unfortunately, are allergic to pollen and plants. How do they cope? Some take daily allergy meds, get allergy shots from their doctor, or try to avoid working with especially problematic flowers. For most, the benefits of the job outweigh the sneezing.

7. THEY WISH CUSTOMERS WOULD TAKE BETTER CARE OF CUT FLOWERS.

If you lament that your bouquets only last a few days, educate yourself about how to properly care for flowers. Florist Brad Weinstein told mental_floss that water is key to helping flowers last longer. “Remember that the more flowers in the arrangement, the need for water will increase,” he said.

To give your cut flowers a long life, check the water level daily, use the packet of powdered flower food that came with your bouquet, and make sure you put your flowers in a clean vase. And don’t forget to keep your flowers away from direct sunlight, heat, and fruit—the ethylene gas that apples and pears emit can cause your flowers to quickly wilt.

8. SUMMER IS THE BEST TIME TO BUY FROM THEM.

Although people might primarily associate buying flowers with Valentine’s Day, February isn’t the ideal time to shop for blooms. The best time to order from a florist is during the summer months. According to the Miami Gardens Florist team: “They’ll have fresher flowers, they’ll be able to take their time to make something beautiful, and you’re more likely to get a discount.” Good news for anyone with a summer birthday.

9. THEY MAY USE FLOWERS IN THE KITCHEN.

Besides looking pretty in a vase, flowers can be used in your kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. Florists may use flowers (such as chamomile or hibiscus) to make flower tea, add dried flowers to oil to make soap, or use pressed flowers to decorate homemade candles. Some florists who enjoy cooking also substitute tulips for onions in certain recipes, such as stews and pastas, and garnish dishes with chopped (edible, pesticide-free) petals.

10. THE MARKUP THEY CHARGE IS WORTH IT.

Depending on where you live, you may be able to buy discounted flowers at a wholesale flower market. If you buy flowers from a florist, though, the flowers may be marked up 2.5 to 3.5 times what they really cost. Florists say that markup is there for good reason. “In all honesty, the prices are justified. You’re receiving a work of art that takes a lot of hard work and effort,” the Miami Gardens Florist team says. Besides labor and time, the price you pay a florist may also include ribbons and other accessories, a vase, and delivery.

11. THEY DEAL WITH MORE THAN JUST FLOWERS.

Most florists don’t focus solely on making flower arrangements. They also take orders over the phone, answer customer questions, and make sales. If a florist owns their own shop, they must also hire employees, fill out tax paperwork, and manage the store’s finances. Some florists also branch out (pun intended) by teaching flower-crafting classes, working with wedding planners or interior designers, and writing articles or books about flower care and arrangement.

12. MARTHA STEWART IS A POLARIZING FIGURE.

Ron Mulray, who owns the Philadelphia Flower Co., told the Philadelphia Inquirer that Martha Stewart is a polarizing figure in the flower world. In the 1990s, Stewart began educating people about flowers, teaching her audience how to design their own beautiful floral arrangements. According to Mulray, floral designers took firm pro- or anti-Stewart positions, with some florists praising her for promoting flowers as an art form and others criticizing her for revealing florists’ trade secrets to the masses.

But whether they love her or hate her, florists admit that Stewart exposed people to the simple joy of flowers. “We could never sell 36 open roses in a hand-tied bouquet before Martha. That was really what she did,” Mulray says.

13. THEY GET TO PARTAKE IN YOUR EMOTIONAL MILESTONES.

Whether they arrange and deliver flowers for weddings, funerals, births, anniversaries, or proms, florists often work with clients who are emotional about recent (or imminent) life changes. And florists aren’t immune to the impact—conscious or subconscious—of the heightened emotions surrounding weddings and funerals. One florist writes about how creating floral arrangements for a funeral sparked a recurring dream: “In the dream, I woke up the woman that died to ask her if she liked the flowers. Her answer was no. She informed me that she had always hated flowers … I remember feeling silly and spooked at the same time.”

14. MOTHER NATURE DELIGHTS THEM.

Many florists are drawn to their profession because they simply love flowers. “Flowers are nature’s art. They’re beautiful, strange, and each one is so different,” the Miami Gardens Florist team says. And working with flowers is an artistic outlet that lets florists express their creativity, working with a variety of colors, heights, textures, and scents. “I love working with flowers because with every season comes a different palette of colors as well as types of flowers …The creativity associated with flowers is part of what keeps me intrigued and excited about my work!” Ghani says.

All photos via iStock.

“Secure the shadow, ere the substance fades.” That very early photographers’ slogan—introduced not long after Louis Daguerre announced his daguerreotype process in 1839—may seem ominous, but it reflects the reality of Victorian life. In an age before antibiotics, when infant mortality soared and the Civil War raged, death was a constant presence in the United States. And one prominent part of the process of memorializing the dead was taking a postmortem photo.

Postmortem photography evolved out of posthumous portraiture, a mode of painting in which wealthy Europeans (and eventually Americans) memorialized dead family members by depicting them alongside a slew of symbols, colors, and gestures associated with death. While the people—usually children—in these images might look reasonably healthy, the presence of a dead bird, a cut cord, drooping flowers, or a three-fingered grip (a reference to the holy trinity) often signaled that the subject was deceased. These types of images, popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries, served as cherished reminders of loved ones long gone.

By the 1840s, however, the production of memorial images started moving from the artist’s studio to the photography studio—and democratized in the process. No longer were the wealthy the only ones who could afford images of loved ones, in life or death. Photography studios spread throughout the country in the 1850s, and postmortem photography reached its height a few decades later. And whereas paintings might have cost large sums, and daguerreotypes were often luxuries, the ambrotypes and tintypes that followed sometimes went for just a few cents.

For the Victorians, the postmortem photo was just one aspect of an elaborate mourning ritual that often involved covering the house and body in as much black crepe as one could afford, as well as more intimate acts like washing the corpse, watching over it, and accompanying it to the gravesite. Early photos were sometimes referred to as “mirrors with memories,” and the Victorians saw photographing the dead as one way of preserving the memory of a family member. Photos of the dead were kept as keepsakes, displayed in homes, sent to friends and relatives, worn inside lockets, or even carried as pocket mirrors.

Photographing the dead, however, was a tricky business, and required careful manipulation of the body, props, and equipment, either at the photographer’s studio or at the home of the deceased. Though the majority of postmortem images depict the dead laid out in a bed or coffin, dead children were not infrequently placed in a mother’s lap to keep them upright (echoing the Victorian fashion for “hidden mother” portraits, in which a parent or assistant was draped in fabric as a backdrop with varying degrees of success). Adults were also most frequently shown in coffins, but occasionally photographed in chairs, sometimes holding a book or other props. After the photo session, photographers manipulated the negative, too—to make the dead person’s stare look less blank, or sometimes to paint pupils over closed eyelids.

Some sense of the difficulties of postmortem photography can be gleaned from remarks by leading daguerrotype photographer Albert Southworth printed in an 1873 edition of the Philadelphia Photographer: “If a person has died, and the friends are afraid that there will be a liquid ejected from the mouth, you can carefully turn them over just as though they were under the operation of an emetic. You can do that in less than a single minute, and every single thing will pass out, and you can wipe out the mouth and wash off the face, and handle them just as well as if they were well persons.”

Today, a lot of myths about postmortem photos circulate on the internet and among the general public. One of the biggest falsehoods, says Mike Zohn, co-owner of New York’s Obscura Oddities and Antiques and a long-time postmortem photography collector and dealer, is that the world’s photo albums are filled with lively looking photos of dead people.

The Victorians “had no issue showing dead people as being dead,” Zohn tells mental_floss. “They did not try to make them look alive, that is a modern myth.” He cautions that Pinterest and other websites are full of images of living people who have been labeled as dead, sometimes with elaborate (but incorrect) explanations of the types of tools that have been used to keep them propped up. “The Victorians also did not use strings, wires, armatures, or anything else to pose the dead,” Zohn adds. “They weren’t meat puppets that were strung up and treated like meat. They were respectful and treated the dead with dignity.”

Part of the problem, writes noted postmortem photography collector and scholar Stanley Burns in Sleeping Beauty II: Grief, Bereavement and the Family in Memorial Photography, American & European Traditions, is that the dead of the 19th century often looked better than the dead of today. We tend to prolong life with measures that weren’t available for the Victorians, but the epidemics of the 19th century killed quickly. “Except for children who died from dehydration or from viruses that left conspicuous skin rashes, or adults who succumbed to cancer or extreme old age,” Burns writes, “the dead would often appear to be quite healthy.”

Zohn particularly cautions against the idea that Victorians used posing stands to create upright post-mortems. “The posing stand is similar in design and strength to a modern day microphone stand,” he says. “There is no way it could possibly hold up the weight of a dead body. If you see a photo with a person and a stand behind them, it’s a guarantee that the person is alive.”

Jack Mord, who runs the postmortem-focused Thanatos Archive, agrees about the posing stands. “People see the base of these stands in photos and assume it’s there to stand a dead person up … but that was never, ever the case,” Mord says. “Basically, if you see the base of a posing stand in a photo, that’s an immediate sign that the person in the photo was alive, not dead.”

Both Zohn and Mord also point out that many people have a misperception about how expensive photography was during the 19th century. Zohn says, “You could easily get a tintype taken for less than five cents—in some cases as low as one or two cents. It was well within the reach of almost all but the very poor, yet some falsely believe it was so expensive that they could only afford to have one image taken and it would have been a post mortem.” While that might have been true when the photography was first introduced—and it’s true that postmortems might have been the only photo ever made of an infant—it wasn’t a general rule.

Some books on postmortem photography mention checking the hands for signs the subject is dead, noting that swelling or discoloration can be a sign of death. But Zohn says it’s easy to misread this clue: “I’ve seen many images of clearly dead people with light-colored hands as well as clearly live people with dark hands. It’s usually caused by lighting and exposure, but could also be something such as suntanned hands that will appear darker.” A better clue, Zohn says, is the symbolism—flowers, folded hands, closed eyes. An adult lying stretched out on a bed with his or her shoes off can be a sign of a postmortem, since shoes can be hard to put on a corpse. And of course, if someone’s lying in a coffin, there’s a good chance they’re dead.

Postmortem photography more or less ended as a common practice by the 1930s in the United States, as social mores shifted away from prolonged public mourning, death became medicalized, and infant mortality rates improved. But “postmortems never truly ever ended,” Zohn says. Today, several companies specialize in taking photos of stillborn infants or newborns, and the practice of postmortem photography continues as a regular event in other parts of the world.

Today, most Americans have decided that our final image is the one we least want remembered. It’s easy for us to shut death out of our minds, and we don’t necessarily want reminders in our homes. But for the Victorians, death wasn’t weird—it was ordinary and ever-present. Burns writes that postmortems “were taken with the same lack of self-consciousness with which today’s photographer might document a party or a prom.”

All photos via the Thanatos Archive, used with permission. Identifying information provided where known.

On the morning of December 29, 1916, Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was startled by a phone call that turned out to be yet another death threat. His daughter, Maria, later remembered that it put him in a bad mood for the rest of the day. That night, at 11 p.m., he gave her a final reminder before she went to sleep: He was going to the Yusupov Palace that evening to meet an aristocrat. It was the last time she saw him alive.

Two days later, a search party found a body trapped beneath the ice of the frozen Malaya Nevka River. It was Rasputin: missing an eye, bearing three bullet wounds and countless cuts and bruises. The most infamous man in Russia was dead, assassinated at age 47.

A hundred years after his murder, the legend of Russia’s “Mad Monk” has only spread, inspiring films, books, operas, a disco song, and even his own beer, Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout. Described by early biographers as “The Saint Who Sinned” and “The Holy Devil,” he remains a difficult man to define. He spent less than a decade in public life, was barely literate, and published only two works. Even within the Russian Orthodox Church, the debate continues: Was Rasputin a charlatan, a holy man, the czarina’s secret lover, Satan himself, or just a simple Siberian peasant?

Above all, one question refuses to rest: What exactly happened to Rasputin in the early hours of December 30, 1916?

 
At the turn of the 20th century, Russia was the last absolute monarchy in Europe, and Czar Nicholas II had proven to be an unpopular ruler. Fearful of revolution and mired in corruption, the Romanovs also suffered from another significant problem: Czarevich Alexei, the young heir to the throne, had hemophilia, an incurable and then-deadly blood disease. When doctors failed to cure the boy, Nicholas II turned to alternative methods. Around 1906, he and the Czarina Alexandria were introduced to a Siberian holy man. Neither a monk nor a priest, but a peasant pilgrim turned preacher and faith healer, Rasputin made a good impression on the royal couple, and by 1910 was a regular at the Romanov court.

Although the czar, czarina, and even the royal doctors (begrudgingly) believed in Rasputin’s healing abilities, his proximity to the throne inspired suspicion and jealousy among the church, nobles, and the public. Rough in manners, fond of drinking, and prone to flirting and even sleeping with his married female followers, Rasputin’s brazen disregard for social norms caused some to speculate about his intentions. A few people even called him a heretic.

Soon, treasonous rumors began circulating that Rasputin was sleeping with the czarina, had fathered Alexei, and held total control over the czar. With World War I raging, Nicholas II’s departure for the front only increased the sense that it was Rasputin who was really ruling Russia. According to his self-confessed murderer, if the country and the czar were to be saved, Rasputin’s malevolent influence had to be erased—Rasputin had to die.

Prince Felix Yusupov—Rasputin’s self-confessed killer and the czar’s cousin—first published his account of the murder, Rasputin, while living in exile in France in 1927. According to his version of the evening, Yusupov walked Rasputin into the Moika Palace at a little after 1 a.m. Upstairs, Yusupov’s four accomplices—Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, conservative member of the Duma Vladimir Purishkevich, Dr. Stanislaw Lazovert, and army officer Sergei Sukhotin—lay in wait, passing the time listening to “Yankee Doodle Dandy” on a gramophone. Yusupov accounted for their noise by explaining that his wife had a few friends over, then led his victim down into the basement. He’d spent all day setting the scene, and had prepared two treats for Rasputin: a bottle of Madeira and several plates of pink petit fours—all laced with cyanide by Dr. Lazovert.

As Rasputin relaxed, eating multiple cakes and drinking three glasses of wine, Yusupov waited. And waited. The “Mad Monk” should have been dead in seconds, but the cyanide seemed to have no effect. Growing worried, Yusupov excused himself to the other room. He returned with a gun, promptly shooting Rasputin in the back. The other accomplices drove off to create the appearance that their victim had departed, leaving Yusupov and Purishkevich alone at the mansion with what appeared to be Rasputin’s corpse.

A strange impulse made Yusupov check the body again. The moment he touched Rasputin’s neck to feel for a pulse, Rasputin’s eyes snapped open. The Siberian leapt up, screaming, and attacked. But that wasn’t the worst part. As Yusupov wrote in 1953, “there was something appalling and monstrous in his diabolical refusal to die. I realized now who Rasputin really was … the reincarnation of Satan himself.”

To hear Yusupov tell it, Rasputin stumbled out of the cellar door into the snow. Purishkevich fired four shots before their victim finally collapsed in a snow bank. Yusupov fainted and had to be put to bed. When the others returned, the body was tied up, wrapped in a fur coat, thrown in a sack, and dumped off the Large Petrovsky Bridge into the river below. In the end, Yusupov said, it had been the first step to saving Russia.

As if Yusupov’s account of Rasputin’s seemingly superhuman strength wasn’t strange enough, another detail from the murder provided by Maria Rasputin and other authors goes farther. When Rasputin’s body was found, his hands were unbound, arms arranged over his head. In her book, My Father, Maria claimed this was proof Rasputin survived his injuries, freed himself in the river, and finally drowned while making the sign of the cross. Although Maria and Yusupov’s accounts had opposing motives, together they inspired the mythic perception of Rasputin as a man who was impossible to kill.

Despite the popularity of Yusupov and Maria’s stories, they have more than a few problems. According to the 1917 autopsy, Rasputin did not drown; he was killed by a bullet. (While accounts of the autopsy differ, according to the account cited by historian Douglas Smith in his new book Rasputin, there was no water in the Siberian’s lungs.) Although it might seem strange that Maria embellished the events of her father’s murder, she had motives to do so: Rasputin’s legend protected her father’s legacy, and by extension her livelihood. The image of his almost-saintly final moments helped turn her father into a martyr, as Rasputin is currently designated by an offshoot of the Russian Orthodox Church. In the same way, Yusupov’s story had its own audience in mind.

 
When Yusupov published the first version of his “confession,” he was a refugee in Paris. His reputation as “The Man Who Killed Rasputin” was one of his few assets, and it proved so profitable that he became very protective of it. In 1932, while living in the U.S., Yusupov sued MGM for libel over the film Rasputin and The Empress, winning the sole right to call himself Rasputin’s killer. Not only did this lawsuit inspire the mandatory “this is a work of fiction” disclaimer that appears in every American film, it made Yusupov’s claim that he killed Rasputin a matter of legal record. However, even this is a lie. In his memoir, Yusupov admits that Vladimir Purishkevich fired the fatal shot—a fact confirmed in the other man’s account as well.

When one examines Yusupov’s account critically, it’s clear he remade himself the hero in a fantasy battle between good and evil. Comparing the original 1927 account and an updated version published in Yusupov’s memoir Lost Splendor (1953), Rasputin goes from being merely compared to the devil to being the actual biblical anti-Christ. Even the description of Rasputin’s “resurrection” appears to be a deliberate invention, borrowing elements from Dostoyevsky’s 1847 novella The Landlady.

By making Rasputin into a monster, Yusupov obscures the fact that he killed an unarmed guest in cold blood. Whatever guilt or shame this framing helped ease, some writers suspect it was also a smokescreen to hide the murder’s real motive. The argument goes, if Yusupov’s reasons (saving Russia from Rasputin’s malign influence) were really as pure as he claims, why did he keep lying to both investigators and the czarina—claiming he’d shot a dog to explain away bloodstains—long after he was the prime suspect?

A few days after Rasputin’s body was found, the Russian World newspaper ran The Story of the English Detectives, claiming English agents killed Rasputin for his anti-war influence on the czar. The story was so popular that Nicholas II met with the British Ambassador Sir George Buchanan that week, even naming the suspected agent—Oswald Rayner, a former British intelligence officer still living in Russia. In addition to his government ties, Rayner was also friends with Felix Yusupov from their student days at Oxford. Although intelligence reports the czar had received named Rayner as a secret, sixth, conspirator in Rasputin’s murder, whatever explanation Buchanan gave was convincing enough that Nicholas never asked about British involvement again.

Others, then and now, are less certain. The same day The Story of the English Detectives was published, one British agent in Russia wrote headquarters, requesting his superiors at what would become MI6 to confirm the story and provide a list of agents involved. Other oft-cited evidence for British involvement is the claim that Rasputin’s bullet wounds came from a Webley revolver—the standard sidearm for WWI British soldiers. This is far from certain, however: The autopsy could not identify the gun, and surviving photographs are too grainy to make definitive claims about powder burns on the corpse’s skin. Finally, there is the (unauthenticated) letter dated January 7, 1917, from a Captain Stephen Alley in Petrograd to another British officer, which reads: “Our objective has been achieved. Reaction to the demise of ‘Dark Forces’ has been well received.” The letter goes on to name Rayner specifically, saying he is “attending to loose ends.”

Rayner was in fact renting a room at 92 Moika at the time of the murder, and had been in contact with Yusupov. He was not, however, listed as an active agent in an official list dated December 24, 1916. Rayner could have been at the Moika Palace during the murder, and the only certain assertion would be his friendship with Yusupov. Perhaps the best evidence against British involvement, however, is the comment of the Saint Petersburg Police chief that the murderers showed the most “incompetent action” he’d seen in his entire career.

 
Incompetence might answer more questions about Rasputin’s murder than spies or the supernatural. In the rush to ditch his body, the killers forgot to weigh the sack down. Instead, as Smith points out, the fur coat they’d wrapped Rasputin in worked like a natural flotation device, pulling his body up and trapping it under the frozen surface. According to the 1917 autopsy, the body’s various cuts were produced as the corpse dragged against the rough ice. This dragging may have even broken the ropes off Rasputin’s frozen, outstretched wrists.

Incompetence would also explain the last problem with Yusupov’s story. In their memoirs, both Yusupov and Purishkevich wrote about Rasputin’s apparent immunity to poison, which allegedly allowed him to consume the cyanide-laced wine and pastries. But no traces of cyanide were found in the 1917 autopsy. As early as 1934, author George Wilkes said in an issue of The British Medical Journal that Yusupov’s description left only one possibility: Rasputin was never given the cyanide. Wilkes wrote, “If Dr. Lazovert tried to poison Rasputin, he bungled his job.” Nearly 20 years later, Lazovert confirmed these suspicions. He confessed on his deathbed that last-minute conscience and his Hippocratic oath made him switch the powder for a harmless substance.

In the end, Rasputin’s killers got off lightly: Dmitri Pavlovich was sent to serve at the front, while Yusupov was put under house arrest at his Siberian country estate. Lazovert’s confession opens an interesting possibility, however. Did Yusupov, unaware of the missing poison, think he had witnessed Rasputin survive cyanide, planting the seed that inspired his later supernatural additions? If so, it would seem fitting—time and again, the reactions Rasputin received were based largely on others’ beliefs and expectations. Even in his own time, the myths that surrounded Rasputin eclipsed—and even sometimes created—the reality.

Sources:

Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs, by Douglas Smith. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2016.

The Life and Times of Grigorii Rasputin, by Alex de Jonge. Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1982.

My Father, by Maria Rasputin. Carol Publishing Group, 1970.

Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs, by Colin Wilson. Arthur Barker Ltd., 1964.

“Cyanide Poisoning: Rasputin’s Death,” by R. J. Brocklehurst and G. A. Wilkes. The British Medical Journal Vol. 2, No. 3838. Jul. 28, 1934. p. 184.

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.

Americans consume nearly 9.5 pounds of chocolate per capita annually, with December being one of the busiest seasons for chocolatiers. The sweet treat is made from the fruit of the cacao tree, native to Central and South America, although it’s now grown in regions all around the equator. When the fruit is harvested, the sweet, pulpy flesh is scooped out and fermented before the seeds are separated and dried. These seeds are the cacao beans, which are roasted (usually), ground, and processed into chocolate.

According to Michael and Sophie Coe’s book The True History of Chocolate, for most of its history chocolate was a drink. The Maya were the first to grow cacao millennia ago, drinking it hot or cold and blended with flavors such as honey, chili, or vanilla. Chocolate came to Europe in the 16th century, where it became wildly popular in part because it was the first caffeinated beverage introduced to the continent, predating tea and coffee. The first chocolate bars didn’t come around until the 19th century, when, as Deborah Cadbury writes in her book Chocolate Wars, chocolate makers in Europe devised the process of blending ground cacao beans with extra cocoa butter (the fat present in the beans), as well as sugar, dairy, and other ingredients.

The process of making high-quality chocolate continues to be innovated today. Mental_floss spoke with Rhonda Kave of Roni-Sue’s Chocolates, Peter Gray of Raaka Chocolate, and Andrew Black of MAST Chocolate—three New York-based bean-to-bar chocolate makers—for their insights into this ancient confection.

1. KNOWING WHERE CACAO BEANS COME FROM IS IMPORTANT.

Most mass-produced chocolate is made from what’s known as “commodity” cacao. Kave moved away from commodity cacao because she felt there wasn’t enough transparency in how the chocolate was sourced—much commodity cacao is grown on the Ivory Coast, where child labor is used. Gray feels similarly: “Bean-to-bar brings a lot of focus on to sourcing. You’re finding out where it comes from and letting the consumer know what they’re getting. For us, the most important step is sourcing.”

2. CACAO FROM DIFFERENT PLACES TASTES DIFFERENTLY—LIKE WINE.

Whereas commodity chocolate is made from beans from multiple regions that are blended to create a consistent product, being bean-to-bar—which means a company starts with unroasted cacao beans and oversees the process through to finished chocolate—entails embracing the variations in single-origin cacao beans. Not only do beans grown in different areas taste differently, but cacao harvests from the same farm can taste different during different seasons. Terroir, or the qualities of the place where chocolate is grown, can affect acidity, fat content, aromatics, and more.

“Where the region is, what grows around it, the nutrients in the soil … that all determines what the cacao tastes like,” Black explains. For example, he says the cacao that MAST sources from Madagascar tends to be really fruity and acidic, with a taste like fresh berries, while their beans from Tanzania are more earthy, toasty, and nutty, and have a higher fat content.

3. THERE WERE THREE MAJOR VARIETIES OF CACAO—BUT THAT’S CHANGING.

Generally speaking, there are only three varieties of cacao—criollo, forastero, and trinitario. (Most of the world’s production is made from forastero.)

“But that’s kinda all blown up with genetic profiling,” Kave says, pointing to the work being done by the Heirloom Cacao Preservation Fund. “What they’re doing is going out into the field in all the various cacao-growing regions of the world, getting samples of cacao people find pleasing, or have an interesting flavor, and then genotyping the trees.” The group hopes to understand each tree, so they can breed for certain qualities, or blend the chocolate in different ways. “There are a lot of different varieties of cacao now; much more subvarieties than previously thought. … It’s kinda a cool time to be interested in cacao.”

4. TWO BARS LABELED WITH THE SAME PERCENTAGE WON’T TASTE THE SAME.

When a bar says it’s 60% or 80%, the percentage refers to the amount of cacao solids in the bar. In general, a bar with a higher percentage is more chocolatey, but can also be more bitter. But two bars with the same percentage won’t taste the same: Not only do beans from different areas taste unique, but the remaining percentage can be made up of any combination of sugar, dairy, emulsifiers, and other ingredients. Kave mentioned a 60% from Brazil that uses goat’s milk and tastes vastly different from any other 60% bar on the market.

5. INSPIRATION COMES FROM INGREDIENTS.

Kave is known for the bold flavors of her truffles, which include pomegranate, sour cherry, key lime pie, pear-walnut-gorgonzola, pickle, and many more. Kave says, “I love to go to different markets and different shops, like Kalustyan’s on Lexington Avenue.” Kalustyan’s is known to New Yorkers as an ingredients-focused store with an enormous spice selection, a huge offering of exotic imported foods, and even fresh produce like hatch chilies and makrut limes. “I can go in there and go ‘what the hell is this? I need to learn how to make something from this.’”

Raaka offers pink sea salt, ghost pepper, and smoked chai tea chocolate bars. Their motto is “Be as innovative as possible.” They’ve started a club called “First Nibs.” Every month, subscribers get two flavors that “are a little wild and experimental,” according to Gray—like porcini mushroom or pine needles.

MAST, meanwhile, has a six-bar herb collection (with flavors like bay laurel, lemongrass, and sage) that Black says is inspired by springtime trips to the greenmarket, as well as a “fruity, savory” olive oil bar. But Black notes that adding flavors to chocolate can be tricky, since cacao has a strong taste on its own: “Sometimes you’ll add a flavor in there that you think may work well, but you can’t even taste it because the chocolate is too overpowering.”

6. STORE YOUR CHOCOLATE DRY—IF YOU’RE STORING IT AT ALL.

“You should always store your chocolate at room temperature,” Black notes. If you put it in the fridge, condensation can develop, and “water is the enemy of chocolate.”

Gray agrees. “It’s good to store between 55-70 degrees. But I’m always baffled by people who don’t eat it within a couple days … at the most.”

7. YOU SHOULD EAT CHOCOLATE BECAUSE IT’S BIGGER THAN YOU.

Gray feels an almost spiritual connection with chocolate. “It’s something that’s been consumed for 3000 years. The consumption of chocolate has outlasted most cultures and societies and empires. It’s bigger than me. It’s rare that there’s something that’s good for your body, mind, and soul—and I think chocolate is that.”

Kave feels that “Craft chocolate makers now are doing really exciting and innovative work, and I love to see that … It’s almost like a rediscovery.”

8. EVEN YOU CAN LEARN TO MAKE CHOCOLATE.

Roni-Sue’s, Raaka, and MAST all offer opportunities to learn about chocolate-making. Kave always starts her classes off with a chocolate tasting, while MAST offers tours that include tempering and wrapping your own chocolate. Raaka, meanwhile, will be launching classes on bean-to-bar chocolate-making in January 2017. Both Roni-Sue’s and Raaka also offer occasional chocolate-focused trips to cacao-growing regions; visit their websites for details.

With additional reporting by Bess Lovejoy.

All photos via iStock.