Author: Shaunacy Ferro

The last meal of Ötzi the Iceman, the Copper-Age mummy discovered frozen in Alpine ice along the Austrian-Italian border in 1991, was a dry-cured meat similar to speck, prosciutto, or bacon, according to Gizmodo and The Local.

Ötzi, who was probably around 45 years old when he was murdered in 3300 BCE, is housed at the European Academy of Bolzano’s EURAC-Institute for Mummies and the Iceman. Researchers have thawed his body and have been studying his stomach contents for insights into his life. The latest research from Albert Zink, who heads up the Institute for Mummies, shows that his stomach contained the remains of raw, dry-cured goat meat. The nanostructure of the meat fibers showed that the goat was not cooked or grilled at all.

“It seems probable that his last meal was very fatty, dried meat—perhaps a type of Stone Age speck or bacon,” Zink told The Local. He was pretty likely to have had a stomachache, too, since previous research findings showed that his stomach contained a bacteria that can result in ulcers or inflammation of the stomach lining in modern-day humans.

And like modern-day hikers carrying beef jerky, Ötzi probably brought his snack from elsewhere, since he wasn’t carrying a hunting bow (though he did have a quiver) that would have allowed him to take down animals for a fresh dinner.

Now we know: The allure of dry-cured meats is timeless. If you’re interested in delving into the Iceman further, EURAC has a high-definition collection of photos of his entire body (including his tattoos) at IcemanPhotoscan.eu.

[h/t Gizmodo]

It’s hard to come up with a really good password for every single website you use, but some commonly used passwords are basically just invitations for nefarious actors to waltz in and steal your information. And yet, as Time reports, people still use “password” to protect access to their personal information. SplashData, a password manager, puts together a list of the worst passwords each year from lists of passwords that have been leaked by hackers. Unsurprisingly, people who use super obvious passwords tend to have their accounts compromised.

So just what are the passwords you should feel ashamed of using in the modern age? Once again, “123456” appears in the top spot on the list, followed by that old standby, “password.” Get a little creative, people! No, replacing the “o” in “password” with a “0” doesn’t make it any safer. Just don’t use any password that even vaguely includes the word “password,” please. Surprisingly, a lot of people use sports like “football” (No. 5 on the list) as passwords, too. Just go ahead and avoid any singular nouns, please.

 Here is the full list:

123456
password
12345
12345678
football
qwerty
1234567890
1234567
princess
1234
login
welcome
solo
abc123
admin
121212
flower
passw0rd
dragon
sunshine
master
hottie
loveme
zaq1zaq1
password1

According to Politifact, the fact-checking website, Google doesn’t even allow you to use “password” as the key to your Gmail account. Those annoying password requirements that dictate that you use a certain number of letters, numbers, and symbols really are trying to protect you (and by extension, their own reputation) from having your account compromised.

The smartest way to protect your information is to use a password manager. Like, for instance, SplashData. There are a number of free password generators out there, though, including LastPass, Dashlane, and StickyPassword. Many of these services also have premium subscriptions that give you more advanced features. These apps don’t just keep all your passwords in one place—they create new, stronger passwords to replace those terrible old ones you always forget anyway.

Regardless of how you decide to deal with your passwords, please enable two-factor authentication.

[h/t Time]

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Tesla’s Autopilot-enhanced vehicles crash 40 percent less often than cars without driver-assistance technology. The agency recently released a new report [PDF], spotted by IEEE Spectrum.

The report was conducted in response to a fatal accident in June 2016, when a tractor trailer crashed into a Tesla Model S on a Florida highway, killing the Tesla driver, who was using Autopilot at the time. The NHTSA then opened an investigation into the incident, which was the first fatality involving Autopilot.

Tesla’s Autopilot has sensors that can engage the car’s brakes when it detects an oncoming crash, even if the driver doesn’t react in time, as well as cruise control that takes the speed of other cars into account. (Autopilot also has automatic lane changing and automatic parking capabilities.) In this case, the Automatic Emergency Braking part of the system didn’t deploy or warn the driver before the collision. However, the report notes that the cars’ automatic braking is only designed for rear-end collisions—which means it can’t be blamed for a side collision. Those kind of crashes are beyond the scope of the system, according to the report, which means it wasn’t a question of the technology malfunctioning.

In the case of the fatal accident in Florida, the NHTSA report found that the Tesla driver was apparently distracted for at least seven seconds, and never tried to brake or steer away from the truck.

 
In fact, the report found that not only was Autopilot not to blame for the 2016 crash, its related Autosteer technology was actually responsible for a significant reduction in Tesla crashes. The Autosteer system can detect road markings and the presence of other vehicles to help drivers stay within their lane, but there’s a catch: The driver is required to keep their hands on the wheel. If the sensors don’t detect hands on the wheel, the software warns the driver several times before turning the technology off.

Once Tesla debuted Autosteer, crash rates for its vehicles went down by almost 40 percent. For every million miles driven before Autosteer, there were 1.3 crashes where the Tesla’s airbags were deployed; after Autosteer, there were only 0.8.

All Tesla cars now come with the hardware necessary to drive fully autonomously, but the law still says drivers can’t let the car take the wheel entirely. In the meantime, while it’s clear that Tesla could improve upon its current driver-assistance tech, the report shows that machines are capable of driving more safely than humans—in certain situations, at least.

[h/t IEEE Spectrum]

In Australia, the dangers of snakes, spiders, and other venomous creatures may be far overblown in the popular imagination, as the BBC recently highlighted. The most dangerous animal in the country, in fact, is a more unassuming creature: the horse.

Research published in the Internal Medicine Journal examined 42,000 hospital admissions for venomous stings and bites over the course of 13 years (2000–2013). Bees were the most dangerous, comprising 31 percent of hospital visits, while spider bites made up 30 percent and snake bites made up 15 percent.

And yet, as the BBC reports, none of the animals the researchers specifically studied was as deadly as the unassuming horse. Study author Ronelle Welton found during the research that horse-related injuries over the same period led to 74 deaths—more than all the animals in the study combined.

The study’s authors found that 64 people were killed by venomous stings or bites, the majority because of the subsequent allergic reaction. Despite the smaller number of snake bite hospitalizations, they were pretty deadly: Snake bites caused 27 of these deaths, the same as did bees and wasps. There were no deaths from spider bites.

Surprisingly, most of the fatalities occurred in cities, not while people were out in the wilderness. Most happened at home. It’s possible that people don’t seek medical care as urgently where healthcare options are plentiful, and can die very quickly from anaphylaxis. And people can develop bee allergies even if they didn’t develop a reaction to a previous sting. Only in 44 percent of fatalities from an allergic reaction related to an insect sting did the person get to the hospital before they died.

The lessons we can take from this are: Be extra careful around bees, and even more careful around the stable.

[h/t BBC]

If your New Year’s resolution is to eat healthier, you should be taking control of your food—in the literal sense. A new study finds that if you serve yourself, you eat smaller portions of junk food and desserts, as the Science of Us and The Wall Street Journal report. The study, led by USC marketing researcher Linda Hagen, found that the more people are physically involved in serving their food, the less interested they are in unhealthy snacks.

The researchers tested their hypothesis out over the course of five tests. In one, they invited students to help themselves to either dried fruit or Reese’s Pieces off a table. Sometimes, the table setup required students to scoop their own snack out of a bowl, while other times, the cups were already set out with 45-gram portions of the snack. The researchers later measured how much of the snacks in bowls or cups had been taken. In another test, people rated how healthy they felt after eating certain snacks, either pre-portioned or not.

Overall, the researchers found that participants were more inclined to choose large portions of unhealthy food if they didn’t portion the snacks out themselves. But there was no effect when people served themselves healthy food.

Eating choices affect how people see themselves, so when people choose to eat unhealthy foods, they feel bad about themselves. Previous research has found that eating in front of a mirror can help make people enjoy dessert less, since people have to confront their own choices in an immediate way. The researchers found that people felt less responsibility for their choices when served by someone else, and thus they felt better about eating unhealthy food.

However, slicing your own cake isn’t the only way to make healthier choices. Other studies have found the best way to increase self control is not to exercise greater willpower in the face of temptations but to take away those temptations altogether. So put away the pie. But if you must, don’t let anyone else slice it for you.

[h/t Science of Us]

Oreo-flavored Cadbury Creme Eggs, which already exist in the UK and Canada, are making their way to America—kind of. According to Thrillist, this February, the U.S. will get Oreo Eggs, a cookie-stuffed twist on the Creme Eggs Cadbury already sells.

Unlike the Cadbury Oreo Eggs available in the UK and Canada, these will not actually be Cadbury products, and won’t be made with Cadbury chocolate. (The two candy-makers do share a parent company, Mondelez International.)

Not impressed? For your quality-chocolate with Oreo fix, you might also want to check out Milka’s Oreo chocolate bars.

[h/t Thrillist]

Stand-up comedy is more than just telling jokes on stage. It’s an art, and one that requires skills honed over years of practice. The way comedians perform their material is far different from how you tell that funny tale at your work holiday party. So what makes a great joke work? The YouTube video series The Nerdwriter took a look at how a joke from Louis C.K. is constructed. Here are some of the most important parts of a joke and its delivery, and why the comedian is so effective, according to the video:

1. PREMISE

That’s what the joke is about. So Louis C.K. might be talking about playing Monopoly with his kids, and how his 6-year-old doesn’t really get it. That’s the premise. And if that premise has its own joke embedded within it—like when he references his daughter’s inability to grapple with her “inevitable loss in every game”—even better.

2. TIMING

A great comedian knows when people are going to react to a bit, and what to emphasize, when to pause, etc. Louis C.K. knows when to continue the joke, hammering home the punch line with another few sentences along the same lines. In his joke about Monopoly, he repeats the idea of him taking his kid’s play money three different times: “That’s mine now. Gotta give it all to me. Give it to me, that’s right.” And the laughs continue with him.

3. DRAMATIZATION

Louis C.K. is great at painting a mental picture of what he’s describing. He uses gestures to emphasize certain parts of the joke, like touching his hand to his heart when he tells the punch line.

4. BROADER COMMENTARY

At the heart of it, Louis C.K.’s joke about destroying his kid in Monopoly and taking all of her hard-earned play money away could be seen as a commentary on what happens every day to adults in the real world, who often lose out to corporate interests. If you think about how a 6-year-old feels about losing her Monopoly money, it’s also an analogue of what happens to, for instance, a family losing its house to a bank.

5. TIGHT CONSTRUCTION

Every word of a great comedian’s joke matters, either to the story or to the rhythm of the bit. It has to be distilled to its most potent, condensed version, or the audience will get bored. When a joke is written well, there shouldn’t be any extraneous content. And when it’s really on-point, that’s when the audience keeps on laughing at every sentence.

[h/t Digg]

Modern prisons don’t usually serve as tourist attractions, but Denmark’s Horsens State Prison, which closed in 2006, should probably be on your list. It’s now home to the Horsens Prison Museum, one of the largest prison museums in the world. (The facility also houses a concert venue, in case you need a side of Metallica with your crime-related history.)

If you can’t make it to Denmark, Expedia created an interactive tour to let you roam the museum virtually. Based on Google Street View, the virtual experience includes descriptions of important features embedded into the photos. It’s a good way to experience the difference between Scandinavian and American criminal justice.

Though the museum labels do describe historical punishments like solitary confinement (considered a form of torture by many experts, but still in use in the United States), the walls of the prison are a bright lime green, the lounges have flatscreen televisions, and the modern cells include desks and large windows. Some portions of the prison look more like a hostel, while others look like the typical multi-story penitentiaries you’d see in movies like 1994’s The Shawshank Redemption.

It’s pretty easy to get lost while trying to wander the virtual halls, but if you click around long enough, you’re sure to end up somewhere interesting. Or you’ll get stuck in the gift shop.

Founding Father Benjamin Franklin dedicated himself to the printing trade for his entire life, from working as an apprentice for his brother to becoming the official printer of both Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Before he founded his first printing shop in his early 20s, Franklin came to Philadelphia and found work with Samuel Keimer, the founder of the Pennsylvania Gazette.

Franklin’s first foray into professional printing has just been acquired by the University of Pennsylvania—which Franklin founded in 1740—and will be on display until February, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. The broadside Franklin printed, a poem written by Keimer, signified his arrival in the Philadelphia printing world.

The poem was an elegy for the 28-year-old Quaker poet Aquila Rose, who died in 1723. Keimer couldn’t actually print, though he could set type, and the 17-year-old Franklin set up his press. Printing the poem led to Keimer offering him a full-time job.

The piece acquired by the university is the only known original copy to survive the centuries, and was thought to be lost until just a few years ago, when it was discovered in a scrapbook created in the 19th century. It will go on display at the university library until February 10. A digital copy is also available online.

[h/t The Philadelphia Inquirer]

The prospect of a good sale can block any kind of rational analysis about the necessity of a purchase. It’s pretty easy to talk yourself into a shiny new toy. But since retail therapy can leave you broke (and not much happier), you might want to try asking yourself a few questions before you hit the checkout.

The Penny Hoarder put together this flowchart to guide you through the sensible thought process you should use while you’re headed up and down the aisles of a store. Try these on for size:

 
Sometimes, though, not even the most rational arguments can dissuade us from buying something we don’t really need. If it’s retail therapy you’re after, keep in mind that research has found that you’ll enjoy purchases more if they fit your personality type. So if you’re really on the fence, consider whether you’re really buying the right thing for you, personally.

[h/t The Penny Hoarder]