Author: Shaunacy Ferro

The best thriller you’ll read this year might not come in paperback. Instead, it might be in the form of a text message conversation. Hooked, a fiction app aimed at teens that’s currently at the top of Apple’s most-downloaded list (more than Snapchat and YouTube), presents stories that unfold through messages between the characters.

Co-founder Esha Gupta says the app came from a desire to harness the addictive properties of smartphones for something healthier than checking social media. At dinner one night, she and the other founders “were talking about how so many of us spend so much time texting—whether through Facebook Messenger or Snapchat or regular iMessage, etc.—and how maybe there is a way to use that addictive behavior but reinterpret it as a way to read and write stories,” Gupta tells mental_floss. In fall 2015, they launched Hooked, which they call “fiction for the Snapchat generation.” It makes texting a literary endeavor.

The stories all revolve around online chats or texts, so opening the app is like peering into someone else’s iMessages. To advance the story, you just need to tap the screen, and a new message between the two characters will appear. In one thriller, for instance, a teenager is texting her mother about a mysterious noise she hears coming from their basement. In another, a therapist working for an online counseling site is chatting with her new patient.

Because of the fragmented, back-and-forth format of the chat stories, thrillers tend to work best, but the app also features stories in genres like romance, science fiction, fantasy, and mystery. Hooked works with authors and commissions custom stories for the app, but users can also submit their own. In total, there are a few thousand stories from both established authors and users, according to Gupta.

The stories aren’t exactly highbrow literature, but they certainly are reaching a wide audience. The app currently has more than 10 million downloads, and in reviews, users almost universally refer to it as “addicting.”

Hooked (available for iOS, Android) is free, but there’s a limit to how much you can read at once. Subscribers can pay $2.99 a week or $7.99 a month to read an unlimited amount of stories in one sitting, but free users encounter a paywall after a certain amount of time. If you don’t want to upgrade, you’ll have to wait 40 minutes for new content to appear.

“I think texting is such a natural form of reading and writing these days,” Gupta says. “People are on their phones constantly, and this is an easy way to escape into a fictional world with fictional characters when you’re on-the-go or in spaces where you maybe have some downtime (i.e. sitting on the bus or waiting for coffee) but aren’t necessarily going to have a book on you.”

[h/t CGTN]

Traffic signals don’t get updated very often. Occasionally, cities test out new walk signals or add extra safety measures for pedestrian crosswalks, but the tri-color traffic light hasn’t changed much since it was invented in the early 1920s.

Moscow-based designer Evgeny Arnin took it upon himself to reimagine what traffic signals and signs could look like in the 21st century, as WIRED reports. His traffic light system is sleek and simple, using large LED displays and colored arrows to keep people safe while on the road.

For instance, a four-way intersection would be visualized using a cross-shaped light, while an intersection where one road dead-ends into another perpendicular street would be visualized by a T shape. If you can turn left but not right, a green arrow would curve to the left side of the cross, but the right side would be blocked off in red.

The system is minimalist: There are only arrows and straight lines of light. As has been the case since the 19th century, red means stop and green means go. Arnin hopes the lack of visual clutter will make signs intuitive and easy to read.

According to Margaret Rhodes at WIRED, now is the perfect time for cities to rethink street signals. As driverless cars become more prevalent, traffic signals need to become easy for cameras to read. While humans can read a traditional street sign as well as these LED arrows, a computer might find it easier to focus on the simplicity of Arnin’s shapes. The edges of the screens in Arnin’s designs also have raised bumper edges to prevent people from getting confused as to which sign in the intersection is directing them—if it’s not a sign for your lane, you won’t be able to read it.

To redesign every street sign in one country, much less the world, would be an enormous expense, and there are plenty of regulatory hurdles involved in designing traffic intersections. While the concept is a finalist in this year’s Lexus Design Awards, the lights may not be coming to a town near you anytime soon.

What’s your favorite Disney Channel Original Movie? It might depend on where you live. CableTV.com looked at state-level data on Google Trends to find out which Disney Channel movies people in each state are searching for.

The list isn’t as intuitive as you’d think. Johnny Tsunami is popular in Hawaii, where the beginning of the movie takes place, but there’s no obvious reason why Nevada residents would be more curious than anyone else about Mom’s Got a Date With a Vampire.

Unsurprisingly, more than one state is filled with fans of the Lindsay Lohan gem Get a Clue. Plenty of people are searching for The Ultimate Christmas Present, a 2000 movie starring Disney Channel darling Brenda Song. Zenon, however, is only appreciated to the extent that it truly deserves in Minnesota. It’s the 21st century, people! Watch more Zenon! You can see the full list on the CableTV site.

In 1911, the Canadian government commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design a visitor center for Banff National Park, the country’s oldest national park. The Banff Pavilion was finished in 1913, but due to frequent flooding in the area, it was demolished in the late 1930s. Now, the Frank Lloyd Wright Revival Initiative wants to bring it back, as Dezeen reports.

Led by filmmaker Michael Miner, who has covered the renowned architect’s work extensively, the volunteer organization is devoted to promoting Wright’s work, in part by rebuilding designs of his that were demolished. The Banff Pavilion will be its pilot project.

Ideally, the organization wants to rebuild demolished Wright buildings on their original sites, choosing designs that are particularly exemplary of the architect’s unique style. The Banff Pavilion was one of Wright’s only completed projects in Canada, and a prime example of his famous Prairie style. The project has gotten preliminary approval from the local city council, and will be built entirely with donated materials and funds.

If the Banff Pavilion is successful, Miner tells Architect magazine that he hopes to move on to adding to Wright’s Pilgrim Congregational Church in California, which was only partially completed during the architect’s lifetime.

[h/t Dezeen]

In honor of Women’s History Month in March, the Brawny Man is again giving up his place on the paper towel roll. For the second year in a row, Brawny is celebrating inspiring women by adding a strong lady to its packaging and highlighting notable women on its #StrengthHasNoGender site. Welcome, Brawny Woman.

Because no one really needs an extra reminder that women are as equally capable as men of cleaning up tough messes around the house, Brawny’s contribution to Women’s History Month goes a little deeper than new paper towel packaging (which is only available at Walmart during the month of March).

The company has chosen to highlight a range of accomplished women in STEM fields: Vernice Armour, the first black female combat pilot in the U.S. military; Dr. Anna Kornbrot, the first woman to graduate from Columbia College and now an oral surgeon; Brittany Wenger, a college senior who taught herself to code and invented Cloud4Cancer, an artificial intelligence program for breast cancer detection; and Dr. Patty Lopez, a veteran computer scientist and advocate for minorities in STEM.

The four women share their stories in the videos below.

The new Peeps Oreos are making a splash in an unexpected way. The pink creme filling is turning diners’ poop a vibrant hue, as BuzzFeed has sniffed out, which may not be the Easter surprise Peeps lovers were looking for.

The promotional sandwich cookies are dyed with a bright pink food coloring (Red Number 3, according to BuzzFeed) that is sure to leave your tongue looking like a Pepto-Bismol ad for some hours, according to a number of people who have posted on social media about the phenomenon. In a review, the Junk Food Guy wrote that the cookie dyed his saliva. He explained: “This is the type of food dye where an hour later, when I went to brush my teeth, IT TURNED MY TOOTHBRUSH PINK.”

A lot of foods (especially brightly dyed candies) will dye your mouth for a little while after you eat. But this stuff really does last:

My roommate ate a whole pack of oreo Peeps and left a pink stain in the toilet.

— ElleLeven (@Barbeydahl) February 23, 2017

If you eat enough of them, that pink dye will run straight through you and possibly require you to scrub out your toilet. An anonymous mental_floss Oreo tester describes the color as “the kind of pink that if, say, your poop were to turn that color, you’d think you were hemorrhaging internally and had three minutes to live.” You probably don’t even have to eat the whole package.

Which is almost a reason in itself to try the super-sweet Oreos. Don’t worry, it won’t kill you, at least no more than any other junk food. Anyone who’s eaten too many beets is familiar with the ability of even normal foods to make your stool look terrifying. A few vivid cookies will just turn your body into a temporary science experiment. Just how long did it take the dye to work its way through your system?

Plus, Charmin is there to clean up your mess. Feel free to document your results—just maybe don’t send them to us.

We hear that #pinkpoop is now a thing. If it hits, don’t worry, no one will hear a peep from us. https://t.co/MFKV7qby0p

— Charmin (@Charmin) March 2, 2017

[h/t BuzzFeed]

Researchers have discovered hints of life hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously known, according to a new study published in Nature. An international team of scientists led by University College London’s Matthew Dodd have found the oldest microfossils ever in what was once a hydrothermal vent system near Quebec, estimating they could be up to 4.3 billion years old.

Located on the eastern edge of Canada’s Hudson Bay, the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt is left over from Earth’s earliest oceanic crust. There, within the quartz layers of banded iron formations, the researchers found remains of tubes and filaments (seen attached to a clump of iron in the image below) formed by bacteria on that early crust, which was part of an ancient deep-sea hydrothermal vent network.

 
The bacterial remnants can be dated back at least 3.77 billion years, older than previously discovered evidence of the beginnings of life on Earth. The oldest confirmed evidence of bacterial life before this, discovered in western Australia, was dated at around 3.5 billion years ago.

Other research has pointed to life 3.7 billion years ago, but scientists were uncertain if the microfossils in question were really biological in origin or formed by some other process. In this study, researchers tested several ways the tubes and filaments discovered could have been created, like through temperature and pressure changes, but found that the most likely origin of the structures was biological. The tubes and filaments studied look much like those formed by bacteria in modern hydrothermal vents, according to the researchers.

 
The newly discovered remains push the timeline of life on Earth back even further. They are probably from even earlier than 3.8 billion years ago and may date to 4.3 billion years ago, according to the study. The planet itself is thought to be around 4.5 billion years old, and multicelled organisms didn’t show up until 600 million years ago. “The findings support the theory that life emerged from hot, sea floor vents shortly after the formation of Earth,” co-author and University of Ottawa professor Jonathan O’Neil explains in a press statement.

Choosing grilled chicken at a fast food joint isn’t the health-conscious choice you might think. For one thing, that piece of chicken doesn’t contain only chicken, as a CBC Marketplace investigation recently found.

The Canadian TV series sent samples of chicken from five different restaurants to a university lab in Ontario for testing, finding that all of them contained significantly less protein than you’d get in a home-cooked piece of poultry.

A piece of unseasoned chicken you buy at the store should be comprised of 100 percent chicken DNA, but tests of grilled chicken from McDonald’s, Wendy’s, A&W’s, Tim Horton’s, and Subway showed much lower levels of bird DNA. Seasoning or marinating would reduce the percentage of chicken DNA in a piece of meat, but Subway, in particular, had a particularly alarming lack of chicken in its chicken.

While all the other restaurants had average values of more than 80 percent chicken DNA, Subway’s samples showed so little chicken DNA that the researchers felt compelled to go get more samples and test them again. The oven-roasted chicken used in Subway’s sandwiches contained an average of 53.6 percent chicken DNA, while the chicken strips used in items like the Subway Sweet Onion Teriyaki sandwich had an average of 42.8 percent chicken DNA in them. Most of the rest of the DNA in the meat was actually soy.

Subway Canada responded to the investigation by saying that the company is “concerned by the alleged findings.”

“Our chicken strips and oven roasted chicken contain 1 percent or less of soy protein,” a Subway spokesman wrote in a statement to CBC. “We use this ingredient in these products as a means to help stabilize the texture and moisture.” The company said it would be looking into the issue with its chicken supplier.

The other grilled chicken options weren’t terribly healthy, either. The tests showed that even after factoring in other ingredients, the fast food options had a quarter less protein than a home-cooked piece of chicken would, and way more sodium (like, up to 10 times more). According to one food scientist CBC spoke to, this is likely because the meat isn’t simple chicken, but a “restructured” product, meaning that it’s made of smaller pieces of meat bound together with other ingredients that make it cheaper or add flavor. What looks like a simple piece of chicken has more than a dozen ingredients—the samples in the study had an average of 16 ingredients. Those ingredients included sugar, a product very few people expect when they order a chicken sandwich.

That doesn’t mean you should swear off chicken sandwiches altogether, but you can stop patting yourself on the back for ordering one instead of a burger.

[h/t CBC Marketplace]

Australian photographer Warren Keelan ventures off shore to get close-ups of the ocean in action.

Go ahead and plan your next vacation around your favorite book. The site Visit Britain has named 2017 the Year of Literary Heroes, celebrating the anniversaries of literary events like the death of Lord Tennyson, the publication of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and the debut of the first collection of Sherlock Holmes stories. Rail Europe, in turn, has come up with some UK itineraries to help you celebrate, according to Condé Nast Traveler.

With the help of the rail company, you can see Jane Austen’s home, visit the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221b Baker Street, or hang out at the Edinburgh cafes where J.K. Rowling wrote her first books.

From March to December, the town of Chawton will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of the death of its most famous resident, Jane Austen. About an hour and a half outside of London by train, Chawton is home to Jane Austen’s House Museum, where she spent the last years of her life. The annual Jane Austen Regency Week in Chawton and nearby Alton takes place from June 17 to June 25, featuring events and exhibitions dedicated to the author.

In May, you can head to Royal Albert Hall in Kensington, London to see a screening of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone accompanied by a live orchestra. The show runs from May 11 to May 14. You can also take the long journey to Scotland, journeying to Edinburgh to have a cup of tea at the Spoon and the Elephant House, the cafes where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. We won’t judge if you pretend you’re on the Hogwarts Express.

In October 2017, Rail Europe suggests you take a trip to London for the 125th anniversary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. You can head to Baker Street, go to the Sherlock Holmes Pub, or take a tour of the BBC show’s filming locations.

Previously, the railway came up with a literary itinerary for Paris and a Game of Thrones-themed trip guide, so you can go ahead and add those to your biblio-themed travel list, too.

[h/t Condé Nast Traveler]