Author: Michele Debczak

Whether viewers prefer gritty crime documentaries or upbeat sitcoms, there’s something for everyone on Netflix. To see which TV shows subscribers are binge-watching in your part of the country, check out the map above, courtesy of HighSpeedInternet.com, which broke down the streaming service’s most popular programs by state by looking at the site’s top 75 shows in 2016. Because Netflix doesn’t publish data on ratings, the list was cross-referenced with information from Google Trends to arrive at the results.

Some takeaways, like Oregon’s love of Portlandia and Indiana’s attachment to Parks and Recreation, aren’t too surprising. There are also several repeats: Scandal is highly watched throughout the South and Midwest while Orange Is the New Black is popular from New Mexico to Alaska.

If you’ve yet to hop on the streaming bandwagon, you can see a map of the most beloved shows across platforms here.

Image courtesy of HighSpeedInternet.com.

If one of your New Year’s resolutions was to take more vacations in 2017, the U.S. Virgin Islands are offering potential travelers some extra motivation. According to Condé Nast Traveler, anyone who books a three-night stay on one or more of the islands will receive $300 to spend during their trip.

The generous deal comes with a few caveats. One, the $300 gift isn’t a stack of cash visitors can use however they please. The rebate equals $300 in credits that recipients can put towards “Historical/Cultural Tours and Activities.” Fortunately, St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix each have a rich history and a vibrant recreation scene, so visitors should have no problem finding ways to spend the money. Snorkeling, kayaking, or touring one of the islands’ several museums are just a few of the options that are available.

To redeem the voucher, tourists can take it to wherever they’ve booked their stay—which is part of the second catch. Travelers are only eligible to receive the gift if they stay at one of the 27 participating locations, which include resorts, hotels, and campgrounds. They have until October 1 of this year to book arrangements and until December 31 to use the spending credits.

The promotion is being offered in celebration of the U.S. Virgin Islands’ Centennial Commemoration. One hundred years ago, the United States paid $25 million in gold to acquire the three islands. To arrive in time for Transfer Day festivities on March 31, you can reserve your stay now (and check out other current promotions) on USVI’s tourism website.

[h/t Condé Nast Traveler]

Since Dippin’ Dots hit the scene in 1988, the unusual ice cream has become a staple in theme parks, malls, and movie theaters. One place you won’t find the futuristic treat (besides space) is at your local grocery store. This isn’t because it lacks a consumer base—most supermarkets just aren’t equipped to store it at such extreme temperatures, Thrillist reports.

The iconic beads of freeze-dried ice cream in every cup of Dippin’ Dots are cryogenically frozen at -320°F. Once the dots are formed, they need to be kept at -40°F in order to maintain their individual shapes. Most standard freezers don’t reach lower than 0°F. At that temperature, the ice cream spheres start to clump together, losing their novelty factor.

Even if a supermarket did have a super-cold freezer that measured up to Dippin’ Dots’s standards, most of their customers probably would not. That’s why Dippin’ Dots are designed to be eaten as soon as they’re purchased—unless, of course, you’re willing to shell out the money for dry ice when you order in bulk.

[h/t Thrillist]

Have you got a Big Question you’d like us to answer? If so, let us know by emailing us at bigquestions@mentalfloss.com.

Whether or not they deserve their notorious reputation, sharks are a common source of fear. But beachgoers shouldn’t worry about coming face-to-face with these spooky specimens—they all live at least 1000 feet below the ocean’s surface. From ghost sharks to goblin sharks, we’re here to shed light on the mysterious lives of these deep sea dwellers.

1. GREENLAND SHARK

The first part of the Greenland shark’s scientific name, Somniosus microcephalus, means “sleep,” a nod to its sluggish lifestyle. The second largest predatory shark in the ocean moves at a glacial pace of one mile per hour. The drowsy name also makes sense in the context of the effect the shark has on those who eat it. Its flesh contains the toxic substance trimethylamine oxide, and ingesting it can cause vomiting, diarrhea, convulsions, and the appearance of drunkenness (that’s why native Greenlanders call someone who’s had too much to drink “shark-sick”). The sharks are also capable of having abnormally long lives. In 2016, researchers found a specimen that had been cruising deep beneath the Arctic for the past 392 years.

2. GOBLIN SHARK

The goblin shark isn’t known for its dazzling good looks. Its defining feature is a jagged mouth of teeth that becomes even more pronounced when it launches forward from the skull to seize prey. Fortunately for anyone disturbed by its appearance, the goblin shark occupies depths up to 4265 feet where looks aren’t a priority.

A much bigger item on the species’s evolutionary agenda is finding sustenance. Food is hard to come by that far below the surface, so the species adapted by developing a relatively large mouth for trapping squid, fish, and crustaceans that pass by. They’ve long been known to Japanese fishermen (who originally named it tengu-zame after a long-nosed goblin from folktales), but much about these sharks still remains mysterious to scientists.

3. DEMON CATSHARK

There are at least 32 species of demon catshark including the white ghost catshark, the smalleye catshark, and the Iceland catshark (above), but scientists still know little about their lives at the bottom of the Northeast Atlantic. The slow-moving creatures grow up to 2 feet long and feed on squid and crustaceans as far as 7000 feet beneath the sea. Their flat heads and gleaming, slanted eyes earned them their demonic name. Another distinctive feature of the Apristurus genus are the two spineless dorsal fins poking up from the back of the body [PDF].

4. SWELL SHARK

Not much light reaches the water 1640 feet beneath the ocean’s surface, but swell sharks have developed a unique way to catch each other’s eyes. Their skin absorbs what little blue light there is at the bottom of the sea and transforms it into brilliant green biofluorescent light. Swell sharks have a photoreceptor in their eyes that lets them detect the glow, whereas humans cannot.

A couple of years ago, a team of researchers found their way around this by building a camera with a blue light-blocking yellow filter. This allowed them to explore underwater environments with “shark vision.” Scientists aren’t entirely sure what function the biofluorescence serves, but they suspect it’s used as a form of communication between sharks. Swell sharks have a different super power for dealing with enemies: When threatened, they suck in large gulps of water, swelling up to twice their size (hence the name).

5. COOKIE CUTTER SHARK

This shark got its cutesy name from a rather gruesome behavior: When feeding, the 16- to 22-inch predators latch onto prey with suction cup lips and rotate to carve out medallions of meat. The wounds they leave behind are more scoop-like than cookie-shaped, and are inflicted on larger animals like marlin, tuna, wahoo, dolphins, and whales. They can be found 3200 feet deep during the day, but they wander upward at night to hunt, which has led to at least one attack on a human swimmer. Though a run-in with a cookie cutter likely wouldn’t be deadly, their creepy, tooth-filled “smile” isn’t something you’d want to see on a midnight swim.

6. FRILLED SHARK

Frilled sharks have been around for 80 million years, a fact that’s easier to process once you take a look at them. At the end of their prehistoric bodies is a mouth full of 300 teeth across 25 rows that glisten white to lure in prey.

The shark is named for its six pairs of gills which are each trimmed with red “frills.” In 2007, a group of fishermen made history when they spotted a live frilled shark in shallow waters off the coast of Japan. The fish was taken to the Awashima Marine Park in Shizuoka where it was transferred to a seawater pool. After some incredibly rare photographs were taken, the shark sadly died a few hour later.

BONUS: GHOST SHARK

In 2009, scientists with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute recorded video of a strange creature 6700 feet deep into the Gulf of California. It had a long nose, ghoulish gray skin, and saucer-like eyes that stared blankly into the surrounding abyss. Seven years later, a team of experts identified the creature to be a pointy-nosed blue chimaera, a species of ghost shark never before caught live on tape.

Despite its name, the ghost shark isn’t technically a shark. Chimaeras are close relatives that also use flexible cartilage in place of solid bone. Little is known about the group, but researchers suspect the lines of dots dimpling their snouts are used to detect prey. Males are also notable for wielding retractable sex organs on their foreheads.

Applying makeup is sort of like elementary school art class: Both require patience, creativity, and a keen eye for color. If you long for the days when you were never without a cardboard box of crayons, Clinique has a nostalgic product to add to your cosmetics kit. The company’s new line of Crayola Chubby Sticks features many of the shades from your childhood in a familiar package, Glamour reports.

Ten classic colors are represented, including Mauvelous, Tickle Me Pink, Mango Tango, and Razzmatazz. Customers can purchase the sticks individually for $17 or spring for a set of four ($25) or eight ($50) colors presented in an iconic Crayola-inspired box.

Even before joining forces with Clinique, Crayola’s products were popular with makeup artists. So many beauty bloggers had touted their colored pencils as a cheap alternative to eyeliner that Crayola had to go on the record warning against using them on your face. Fortunately their new line of lipstick was designed specifically with that purpose in mind. The limited-edition Chubby Sticks are currently available through Clinique.

[h/t Glamour]

Less than 3 percent of the U.S. population is blind, which means many of our perceptions about the community are informed by movies and TV. The mental_floss List Show’s Josh Sundquist is here to dispel some of the more pervasive myths about blindness once and for all. No, not all blind people read braille (the books are much heavier and more expensive than a Kindle), and not everyone who’s visually impaired uses a cane (many prefer to rely on service animals, sighted guides, or their own limited vision when out and about). To hear more misconceptions get debunked, check out the video above.

Plenty of city names are straightforward, but others (Kansas City, Missouri, anyone?) could benefit from some context. For instance, did you know that Chicago derives from the Algonquian word for wild garlic? Or that Anchorage, Alaska was named after a local hardware store? If the video above from the mental_floss List Show isn’t enough to satisfy your knowledge cravings, check out this roundup of name origins for every state in the U.S.

Some pretty fantastic discoveries have been made about animals in the name of science. Did you know that koalas hug trees to regulate body temperature, or that capuchin monkeys can be taught to use silver disks like currency? Those are just a few examples of the many fascinating conclusions that have been drawn from animal studies. For more, check out the video from the mental_floss List Show above.

You don’t need a calendar to tell you when the holidays have ended—just take a look outside to see if rows of skimpy, dried-out Christmas trees are lining the curb. Each year, roughly 33 million live Christmas trees are purchased in North America, many of which end up rotting in landfills once the new year arrives. But making our days merry and bright isn’t the only thing a felled evergreen is good for. Here are some ways Christmas trees continue to serve a purpose long after their decorations have been packed away.

1. THEY’RE USED AS LUMBER FOR HOMES.

The tree that’s erected in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center each November is arguably the most iconic Christmas display there is. It’s also one of the largest, reaching up to 100 feet tall and often weighing more than 10 tons. That’s a lot of lumber, and luckily, Habitat for Humanity makes sure it’s put to good use. Every year since 2007, Rockefeller Center has donated its tree to Habit for Humanity International after taking it down on January 9. From there, the festive behemoth (usually a Norway Spruce) is divided into sections in the plaza before it’s shipped to a mill in New Jersey for additional sawing. It’s eventually made into 2-by-4 and 2-by-6 beams used in construction projects around the country. Homes in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Morris, New Jersey, and Philadelphia all contain pieces of what was once the world’s most famous Christmas tree in their walls.

2. THEY’RE MADE INTO UNDERWATER ECOSYSTEMS.

If you were to walk along the bottom of Lake Havasu between Arizona and California long enough, you’d eventually come across the site of a Christmas tree graveyard. What may be a creepy scene to holiday lovers is a lush utopia for fish—the branches of the spruces, firs, and pines provide a hiding place from predators and attract food for the fish to nibble on.

The 875-acre artificial reef resting on the lakebed consists of PVC pipe, cinder blocks, concrete sewer pipe, brush, and thousands of Christmas trees weighed down with sandbags. Decades of decomposed plant matter have built up a healthy layer of moss and algae around the non-degradable structures. This green coating attracts insects, which in turn attract fish looking for a snack. The end of the holiday season marks the introduction of 500 new trees to the reef, each of which will take about five or six years to break down completely.

3. THEY’RE USED TO BUILD SAND DUNES.

Spend a day on the beach in summertime and Christmas trees will likely be far from your mind—but on at least one beach along the East Coast, there are thousands of abandoned conifers buried in the sand. That’s because Bradley Beach, New Jersey depends on recycled Christmas trees to build its sand dunes. Discarded trees are laid out on the beach and held in place between two parallel fences. Sand that blows in from shore gets caught in the branches, eventually packing into a full sand dune over the course of several seasons. Unlike piles that have been pushed together with bulldozers, sand dunes that are allowed to build naturally over time provide a more stable barrier against storm surges. When the time is right, the town plants dune grass to give the structures even more stability, with the vegetation’s hairy roots anchoring trees in the sand.

4. THEY PROVIDE ENRICHMENT TO ZOO ANIMALS.

In the wild, many animals encounter plant life that changes with the seasons. The Oakland Zoo in California hopes to simulate this seasonal variety in captivity with annual Christmas tree donations. Each year, a local Christmas tree lot hands over whatever’s left of their inventory at the end of the season. The zoo’s residents are more than happy to take the trees that others didn’t want—zebras munch on the needles, squirrel monkeys swing from branch to branch, and otters play games of “smell and seek” with treats hidden in the trees by zookeepers. Oakland’s zoo isn’t the only one to take advantage of the surplus of trees at the end of year. The Staten Island Zoo, the North Georgia Zoo, the Linton Zoological Gardens in the UK all accept tree donations.

5. THEY HELP RESTORE MARSHLAND.

Christmas trees are a key tool in the fight to save Louisiana’s marshland. The state loses 25 to 35 miles of coastal wetlands a year to advancing ocean tides, and one thrifty way to prevent further damage is by building fences around the marsh’s perimeter. Since the Santa Saves the Marsh project began in 1986, over 1.5 million Christmas trees have been used for this purpose. Following the holiday season, bundles of timber collected from around the country are flown in via a helicopter on loan from the Army National Guard and dropped into the wetlands below. These trees are used to stuff pre-built wooden pens surrounding the bayou. Today, more than eight miles of Christmas tree fencing lines the vulnerable habitat, and it’s already proven valuable: When Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana’s southern coast in 2005, the shoreline behind the barricade was better protected.

6. THEY’RE USED AS AN ENERGY SOURCE.

Christmas trees likely aren’t the alternative fuel source of the future, but that hasn’t stopped Burlington, Vermont from ringing every watt of energy they can get from their seasonal haul. The Joseph C. McNeil Wood and Yard Waste Depot collects hundreds of unwanted trees from households and Christmas tree lots at the end of each holiday season. That organic waste gets fed to a wood chipper, and part of the mulch that comes out is sent to the local power plant where it’s tossed into a boiler. The heat generated from the boiler evaporates water into steam that’s used to power the turbine in the plant’s generator. Each tree that’s incinerated amounts to about 36 cents worth of energy for the town.

The Merry Mulch Project isn’t able to produce enough fuel to keep the plant running on 100-percent Christmas tree power (for that, the boiler would need to be fed the equivalent of 100 trees per second), but luckily, Burlington uses other renewable resources like wind and water to keep the city running throughout the year.

7. THEY’RE MADE INTO PATHS FOR HIKING TRAILS.

It’s hard to go for a hike through Dunbar Cave State Park in Tennessee without trampling on ghosts of Christmas past—all of the mulch used to cushion their trails is made from old Christmas trees. A thousand trees are mulched by the park as part of their annual Trees to Trails program and laid along pathways by volunteers. According to the National Christmas Tree Association, Friends of Dunbar Cave board member David Boen said they stick to Christmas trees exclusively because “by definition they don’t have any invasive species or seeds.” In addition to making them easier to walk on, mulch also protects trails from damaging water run-off.

8. THEY’RE TRANSFORMED INTO ART.

Since 2012, artist Michael Neff has installed a seasonal art project in New York City. “The Suspended Forest” started with a handful of forgotten Christmas trees hung illegally beneath an overpass in Williamsburg. The most recent iteration included 40 floating trees harvested from sidewalks and tree lots after Christmas. They were on display in a warehouse in Queens through the month of January (this time around, Neff had actually received permission to put them there). He hopes to keep bringing the exhibit back to New York and potentially re-imagine it for different cities in the future.

9. THEY PROVIDE FREE MULCH TO GARDENERS.

If a Christmas tree doesn’t end up hanging in a warehouse, decomposing on a lakebed, or providing festive scenery for a landfill, it’s most likely turned into mulch. Plenty of towns pulverize their discarded Christmas trees for use in parks and public spaces, but San Diego does something a little different with theirs. For decades the Miramar Greenery has invited city residents to pick up free mulch and compost for use on private property. After dropping off unwanted trees at locations around town or dumping them on the curb, families can visit the Greenery later in the year to collect the mulch they helped contribute to. In a single year, the recycling program can make mulch out of nearly 1000 trees, making the city’s Christmas trees the gifts that keep on giving.

Some of cinema’s most memorable scenes are the ones that make the audience feel as though they’re part of the action. The effect seems effortless, but getting there requires a whole lot of work behind-the-scenes. To provide a better look at the creative processes behind three iconic films, the Vimeo channel Glass Distortion has edited together several finished movie scenes with their original scripts and storyboards.

For the project the editor chose the 1980 Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back and two modern classics, The Dark Knight (2008) and No Country for Old Men (2007). Even if you’ve watched these scenes a dozen times each, seeing them alongside their storyboard art adds a whole new dimension. Check out the comparisons below.

[h/t Sploid]