Category: viral

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Tiny Clogs for Dogs Went Viral…and Got Mixed Reviews from the Dogs

I’ll be the first to admit that cute dogs in cute clothes slay me.

On a flight some years ago, my husband flipped through SkyMall until he found a beagle wearing Pugz, which he showed to me, and I absolutely lost it.

It still makes me laugh.

Now a new company has created new dog shoes for the Instagram and TikTok generations.

Dogs have long been interested in Crocs footwear.

Mine likes to chew them if they get in the way of her evening treat, so I had to start keeping them by the back door.

Now Crocs enthusiasts can buy a matching pair for their favorite pooch.

According to Mental Floss, the Croc-like shoes are made by an unaffiliated company called GEHARTY, and people are going bananas.

These shoes are only for little canines though.

Measuring 2.76 by 1.15 inches, the footwear is designed to fit tiny paws, so larger dogs will have to get their novelty shoes elsewhere.

And unlike real Crocs (and Pugz!), these sandals are not actually meant to be comfortable–or worn while walking.

But if you want to make your pet look cute and comfy while lounging around the house—or posing for pictures—these are the perfect shoes.

From the Instagram #dogcrocs, it looks like people are taking them at their word.

Olive, a Boston terrier from the account @oliveandgus, dressed up in her finest for Valentine’s Day.

Gus looks less amused.

But Olive seems to own a pair in every color.

Meanwhile, this Corgi put its foot down and refused to play along.

But Michael Anthony the Chihuahua doesn’t seem to mind.

They were selling on Amazon for $13 until recently.

After going viral, the shoes sold out in every color.

Now two colors are back in stock at the new price of $20.

What do you think? Cutest thing ever or a trend that should disappear? Let us know in the comments.

The post Tiny Clogs for Dogs Went Viral…and Got Mixed Reviews from the Dogs appeared first on UberFacts.

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An ER Doctor Went Viral for Pointing Out That Fast Food Is All Some People Can Afford

There’s no question that everything, including food, keeps getting more and more expensive.

Add in a food desert, and people are paying crazy prices for fresh food the rest of us take for granted.

So when a doctor tweeted about the relative costs of fast food compared to fresh food, her thread went viral, with lots of people weighing in on both sides.

Emily Porter is an ER doctor and cancer survivor living in Austin, Texas.

When she tweeted about the cost of food, she was urging empathy and asking people not to judge others, but she had to know it was going to be controversial:

A lot of Twitter users doubted that a medical doctor would eat McDonald’s for lunch, as though they don’t rack up thousands in debt from medical school, and as though they don’t crave fast food like other humans.

But Dr. Porter took the time to explain her background:

Not only did she grow up poor, but she worked on the front lines of poverty, watching others in her community purchase what they could afford at a fast food restaurant.

She even took the time to explain the food desert in her area, and the fact that people basically only shop at the dollar store.

The responses to her tweet ran the gamut. Some came with empathy and agreement, others did not.

Apparently some even suggested that the poor should invest in Blue Apron meals, which surprised me, because meal kits tend to be pricey. They definitely cost more than McDonald’s.

Here was Dr. Porter’s response:

But that is the point of such a tweet–starting a conversation that needs to be had.

Some people argued that fast food eaters were lazy:

To which others replied, it’s not just about the money. It’s about the cost of time and labor too.

Some people even argued that the poor should buy a rotisserie chicken at Sam’s Club or Costco.

Few pointed out that those are loaded with sodium, but some people did point out the absolute tone-deafness of such a suggestion.

Bored Panda said that a major argument, that cooking healthy food is cheaper, isn’t necessarily true.

And unlike Twitter users, they brought the receipts:

According to the results of a meta-analysis published in 2013 in BMJ Open, a healthier diet costs $1.48 more a day, which would add up to $540.20 a year, and for a family of four, the amount would equal to $2,160.80.

The article did note that a UK study disagrees with this assessment, so maybe it’s regional. The UK is very different from the US in a lot of ways, maybe it would generally be less expensive to eat healthier in the UK and not in the US.

A lot of people suggested eating beans.

Many users, however, completely agreed with Dr. Porter’s assessment of the cost of eating.

And they pointed out a lot of things that it’s easy to overlook from a privileged point-of-view.

Like the cost of time…

…the fact that just because something is possible, doesn’t mean everyone has the ability to make it work…

…and the simple fact that fast food is easier to chew than, say, a carrot.

It’s safe to say that there are no easy answers to this question, but one thing is for sure: it’s a frustrating situation that needs to improve.

What do you think? Does Dr. Porter have a point? Is this system set up to be broken? Let us know in the comments.

The post An ER Doctor Went Viral for Pointing Out That Fast Food Is All Some People Can Afford appeared first on UberFacts.

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A General Suggests We Should Let Drones Do More Work the Military

Perhaps you got a toy drone in a White Elephant exchange at work. Or a neighborhood kid crashed one in your backyard. Maybe you’ve used one yourself to take wedding or real estate photos. It feels like something out of Asimov or Jules Verne, but it’s 2021 and the hot topic in the military is what to do about drones.

Specifically: swarms of them.

In a recent article for Forbes, David Hambling, the author of of Swarm Troopers: How small drones will conquer the world, lays out this military conundrum for the lay-reader.

Image credit: Indian Army via Forbes

The problem is both simple and complex.

Simply: The more outnumbered humans become in battle, the harder time they will have reacting to threats. In the future, humans won’t be able to keep up.

We get tired. We can be distracted. We have consciences, most of the time.

But just how much autonomy do we want to hand over to machines? We all know about The Terminator and I, Robot, right?

Image credit: U.S. Navy via Forbes

That is exactly the question military leaders around the world are grappling with.

General John Murray, who leads the U.S. Army Futures Command, believes it’s time to turn over some, but not all, of the control.

These require meaningful human control over any lethal system, though that may be in a supervisory role rather than direct control – termed ‘human-on-the-loop’ rather than ‘human-in-the-loop’ … Pentagon leaders need to lead a discussion on how much human control of AI is needed to be safe but still effective, especially in the context of countering new threats such as drone swarms.

Such a move, to allow humans to supervise but not fully control drones, would require the government to change current rules around their use and deployment.

Image credit: U.S. Army via Military.com

But General Murray thinks this is going to be necessary because:

Faced with large numbers of incoming threats, many of which may be decoys, human gunners are likely to be overtaxed.

Unsurprisingly computers are just faster and better.

It seems our humanity gets in the way. Research shows:

Human operators kept wanting to interfere with the robots’ actions. Attempts to micromanage the machines degraded their performance.

Then there’s the brain versus microchip processing speeds.

“If you have to transmit an image of the target, let the human look at it, and wait for the human to hit the “fire” button, that is an eternity at machine speed,” said one scientist, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If we slow the AI to human speed …we’re going to lose.”

The threat that governments are most concerned about, massive drone swarms, is already very real.

Military swarms of a few hundred drones have already been demonstrated, in future we are likely to see swarms of thousands, or more. One U.S. Navy project envisages having to counter up to a million drones at once.

China is known to have a drone swarm launcher ready to go, and other nations may not be far behind.

Image credit: CETC via Forbes

Drone swarms present a clear and present danger, a new kind of weapon of mass destruction.

Analysts can use computer-generated swarming algorithms based on swarming and flocking patterns of birds and insects to anticipate attacks and design counter measures.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

And billions is being spent on new technology to combat the drones, including an anti-aircraft vehicle called IM-SHORAD, but without machines to control our defenses, it may not be enough.

At this point, we have 2 options: we can try to pass a treaty along the lines of the nuclear proliferation treaty that limits the creation and use of nuclear weapons, or we can try to fight like with like.

The European Parliament supports a full out ban.

“The decision to select a target and take lethal action using an autonomous weapon system must always be made by a human exercising meaningful control and judgement, in line with the principles of proportionality and necessity.”

The other line of thought is that these machines could actually be more ethical in the long-term, due to their lower margin of error.

So outlawing them altogether may not be the right answer.

Unlike with nuclear weapons, where a lot of people have them stored but know that using them would result in retaliation, AI is a bit of a gray area. It can be built and programmed and owned without its very nature being destructive, which makes it harder to control.

If AI-controlled weapons can defeat those operated by humans, then whoever has the AIs will win and failing to deploy them means accepting defeat.

Image credit: YouTube via Forbes

The argument over what to do has dragged on for years, but the technology is here now, without a clear answer.

At this rate, large-scale AI-powered swarm weapons may be used in action before the debate is concluded. The big question is which nations will have them first.

The whole debate reminds me of the brilliant 1985 sci-fi novel novel Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (which sadly was not done justice by the 2013 film of the same name).

The time to make a decision and prepare for these types of attacks is now. And it sounds like unless we’re going to train up a super-genius army of video-game playing children to counter other countries drone attacks, we might need to let out the leash a bit on the machines.

The post A General Suggests We Should Let Drones Do More Work the Military appeared first on UberFacts.

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A Kid’s Poem About Online School Went Viral Because It Is Too Real

It’s been a rough year for most of us in a lot of ways.

But there has been comfort in the fact that we were all going through it together–the staying in doors, the wearing masks, the endless meetings on Zoom.

So when one 7-year-old wrote a poem expressing his dissatisfaction with online schooling, literally everyone on Twitter ecstatically agreed.

The child’s babysitter Julia posted the anti ode online last year and instantly went viral.

Here’s the text…

Boring online school
Today is just another day
in a long line of days
staring at a dumb screen
Just boring boring
online school that’s the
only thing that did happen
it’s the only thing that is
happening that’s the only
thing that will happen

So many people commented their concern about the boy that his baby sitter felt compelled to elaborate that he wasn’t depressed or in danger.

She went on to explain that this was an assignment for school, and I personally loved that she described him as snarky, because it feels like something I would have done in college, rather than first grade.

Many of the more literary minded Twitter users were impressed with the artistic nature of the poem.

I’m guessing they were English majors like I was.

Others took the poem and played with it, putting their own spin on the form, such as this one, which distilled the poem down into one perfect Haiku that encapsulates 2020.

While others cleverly compared it to well known classics:

And still others compared it to funny things other children have done, both in the distant past:

And more recently:

The poem evoked a lot of visceral feelings about life amid the pandemic.

It raised debate over the merits of online schooling and the fact that kids generally feel just as bored sitting in a desk in person.

But as someone who loves working from home, and at the same time despises the endless hours of meetings, I felt this poem in the very depths of my being.

As one user expressed so clearly:

What do you think? Did his poem make you feel seen, or just make you a little bit sad for kids these days?

Let us know in the comments.

The post A Kid’s Poem About Online School Went Viral Because It Is Too Real appeared first on UberFacts.

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People Challenged Her Right to Wear a Metallica Shirt, so a Woman Pulled Out a Guitar and Set Them Straight

If you’re going to put yourself out there online, you expect that you will have to deal with some level of haters.

It comes with the territory.

The trolls come out, armed with keyboards and masked by anonymity.

And when that day comes, I hope we can all handle it with next-level grace and grit, like Zaria Joyner did.

Last December, Zaria, a young musician, posted a video to her TikTok account @zariasmusic describing the difficulties of being a woman trying to break into the industry, and asking her followers to stream her songs on Spotify.

@zariasmusic

The song is called “Romanticized” by Zaria let me know what y’all think #music #spotify #artist #studio #rap

♬ original sound – Zaria

A small, unexpected detail in the video brought in the trolls, not because she was asking for help, but because she generally presents herself as an R&B musician, and she had the audacity to wear a Metallica t-shirt.

But then… a troll rolled into the comments.

@paytonnsmith said: “Name 3 Metallica songs.” And others followed the troll’s lead.

Undeterred by the haters, Zaria responded in the most amazing way possible.

Instead of naming 3 songs, she played them. She may be soft spoken, but she absolutely shreds on guitar.

@zariasmusic

Reply to @paytonnsmith I hope this video finds the #Metallica fans lol, not my best #guitar playing but that wasn’t really the point #guitarist

♬ original sound – Zaria

With chops like that, you have to wonder how long she’s been dedicated to her craft.

Turns out, Zaria was practically born with a guitar in her hands.

@zariasmusic

follow your dreams kids. @sullyguitars #guitar #guitarist #rock #metal #GEICOLipSync

♬ Original Sound – Unknown

And she always knew that she was going to be a star some day:

@zariasmusic

Me in the first picture would be so proud of me now, I’m dropping my first rock song very soon so follow my Spotify ❤ #guitar #rock #metal #emo #punk

♬ Dead Man Walking – Brent Faiyaz

Lots of Zaria’s TikTok videos show fun little snippets from her song-making process. Like this one:

@zariasmusic

Do y’all want more videos like this? #studio #homestudio #artist #spanishpop

♬ original sound – Zaria

Or recordings of her laying down backing vocals for famous singers like Ariana Grande.

@zariasmusic

If you guys like this drop a like and comment and check my music out on Spotify! #arianagrande #positions #Bye2020 #NewYearNewMiO

♬ original sound – Zaria

And Zaria understands how the TikTok logarithms work, so she’s definitely willing to engage with her critics, as she did in this video response to people who disapprove of her use of auto-tuning.

@zariasmusic

#duet with @wshanelance thanks Shane for teaching these plebs a lil something about the music industry #autotune #rap #producer

♬ original sound – SHANE LANCE

She apparently took the whole experience in stride and is “taking requests, I guess.”

She added…

“I really just thought it would be funny and I didn’t expect the response that the video received.

The supportive comments just kept rolling in.”

Zaria says that Metallica was one of her earliest musical influences, and the reason that she learned to play guitar in the first place, a background that is now helping her to redefine the genre of R&B.

As she likes to put it, her sound is more like R&R&B (Rock & Rhythm & Blues).

@zariasmusic

Reply to @soultun3 What do y’all think? This comment has me weak ?? #randb #blues #rock #guitar #guitarsolo

♬ original sound – Zaria

She loves what she’s doing, and she’s proud of her work. But she’s quick to remind viewers that it’s a tough industry to break into.

Check out her Link Tree from which you can stream her songs on Spotify or Apple Music and see for yourself.

I’d say she totally showed the haters. I wish I could ever have a comeback that solid.

Have you ever had the opportunity to respond to trolls like that? Let us know in the comments.

The post People Challenged Her Right to Wear a Metallica Shirt, so a Woman Pulled Out a Guitar and Set Them Straight appeared first on UberFacts.

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Plant-Based “Stem Cells” Could Possibly Drive an Environmental Revolution

For the last couple of years, my family has been making a conscious effort to buy less plastic.

Certainly we try to avoid single-use plastics, but even for things that we’ll use again and again we try to find more durable, organic or metal alternatives.

But of course, there’s often an environmental cost to wooden items, too. It presents a conundrum.

Until now. Are you ready to have your mind blown? Lab. Grown. Furniture.

I warned you.

Image credit: Goashape via Unsplash

Wooden furniture is gorgeous, and plant fibers are supremely useful for other everyday items too, like clothing.

That’s why bamboo has become so popular–it grows quickly, with less environmental impact.

But now a PhD candidate at MIT, Ashley Beckwith, and her co-author, Luis Fernando Velásquez-García, have a brilliant plan to reduce waste and environmental impacts even further by growing wood in useful shapes (like 2 by 4’s) right in a lab.

The MIT research team has been working with zinnia tissue, and they published their findings recently in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

As Fast Company reports, their goal is to:

…quickly produce in a lab what would take decades to grow in nature. From there, they could even coax wood tissue to grow into fully-formed shapes—like, say, a table—in order to mitigate the environmental harm of the logging and construction industries.

It’s not a completely new concept. Velásquez-García, a scientist in the university’s Microsystems Technology Lab, explains it in pretty simple terms.

“The plant cells are similar to stem cells. They have the potential to be many things.”

And it’s not just human stem cells. Other scientists have had similar success with lab grown meat products.

So isolating the ability to reduce plants down to a version of a stem cell is just the first step.

Like the meat manufactures who want to grow only the most desirable parts of the animal, Beckwith and team have similar plans for their saplings.

“Trees grow in tall cylindrical poles, and we rarely use tall cylindrical poles in industrial applications.

So you end up shaving off a bunch of material that you spent 20 years growing and that ends up being a waste product.”

Rather than stopping with just growing trees, the team could grow planks, or, rather like 3D printing, they could even guide the development of the plant fiber into the exact shape for its intended purpose.

Of course not every manufacturer has a noble drive to safe the planet.

That’s why this new process is so exciting. It’s so easy, that when compared with the cost of logging, transportation, and everything that goes into cutting down trees to shape them into boards, lab grown trees could actually come out on top, at a lower cost!

Image credit: Lukasz Szmigiel via Unsplash

If the idea of lab-grown veggies freaks you out though, don’t worry. The folks in charge don’t see this being a process that is used to grow food. More like the kinds of plants used to make clothes and industrial materials. There are so many things that could be made from biodegradable plant fibers! Deforestation could become a thing of the past! At least due to human consumption.

How’s that for exciting? Did it blow your mind?

Tell us what you think in the comments!

The post Plant-Based “Stem Cells” Could Possibly Drive an Environmental Revolution appeared first on UberFacts.

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This is How Lava Lamps Are Protecting You from Hackers

Everyone worries about data encryption and cybersecurity. I’m certainly no stranger to the concept.

I think my credit card has now been skimmed 3 times in 2 years, but 2020 was 5 years long, so I may have lost count.

That’s where cybersecurity companies like San Francisco based Cloudflare come in, bringing a very unique perspective to data encryption.

As Atlas Obscura reports:

Cloudflare covers about 10 percent of international web traffic, including the websites for Uber, OKCupid, or FitBit.

I’m betting most readers have used at least 2 out of 3 of these sites at some point.

So it’s fascinating to learn that Cloudflare has a pretty unique method for generating random encryption code to protect those sites: a wall of lava lamps.

Posted by Cloudflare on Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Yes, you read that right.

The wall features over 100 lava lamps, spanning a variety of colors, and its random patterns deter hackers from accessing data.

It feels like the most hipster thing ever, but we all know the feeling of zoning out in front of a randomly swirling blob of light and color, right?

Well it turns out:

As the lava lamps bubble and swirl, a video camera on the ceiling monitors their unpredictable changes and connects the footage to a computer, which converts the randomness into a virtually unhackable code.

Posted by Cloudflare on Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Who knew that kind of magic was even possible?

Someone smarter than me, that’s who.

Cloudflare might have taken it to a whole new level, but they didn’t actually invent the “LavaRand” concept, which was patented for a few years by another company in the ’90s.

As Cloudflare explains on their blog:

In cryptography, the term random means unpredictable. That is, a process for generating random bits is secure if an attacker is unable to predict the next bit with greater than 50% accuracy (in other words, no better than random chance).

True randomness, they explain, only exists in the natural, physical world. Most encryption companies rely on pseudorandomness, or the generation of random data.

Pseudorandomness is generated through the use of a deterministic algorithm that takes as input some other random value called a seed and produces a larger amount of random output (these algorithms are called cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generators, or CSPRNGs)

The lava lamp system, it seems, may be a little bit of both, which is kind of mind boggling all on its own.

They’ve withstood the test of academic analysis, years of being used in production, attacks by resourced adversaries, and so on.

Be sure to check out this video from Tom Scott about the lamps:

And if you ever find yourself in the Bay Area, you can go see the futuristic cybersecurity in action for yourself.

Since any kind of external disturbance affects the lamps, increasing the randomness of their patterns, the company has no problem with visitors coming to gawk.

Simply enter the lobby of Cloudflare’s San Francisco headquarters and ask to see the lava lamp display.

I definitely want to check that out.

Did this story blow your mind as much as it did mine? Let us know in the comments!

The post This is How Lava Lamps Are Protecting You from Hackers appeared first on UberFacts.

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This is How Lava Lamps Are Protecting You from Hackers

Everyone worries about data encryption and cybersecurity. I’m certainly no stranger to the concept.

I think my credit card has now been skimmed 3 times in 2 years, but 2020 was 5 years long, so I may have lost count.

That’s where cybersecurity companies like San Francisco based Cloudflare come in, bringing a very unique perspective to data encryption.

As Atlas Obscura reports:

Cloudflare covers about 10 percent of international web traffic, including the websites for Uber, OKCupid, or FitBit.

I’m betting most readers have used at least 2 out of 3 of these sites at some point.

So it’s fascinating to learn that Cloudflare has a pretty unique method for generating random encryption code to protect those sites: a wall of lava lamps.

Posted by Cloudflare on Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Yes, you read that right.

The wall features over 100 lava lamps, spanning a variety of colors, and its random patterns deter hackers from accessing data.

It feels like the most hipster thing ever, but we all know the feeling of zoning out in front of a randomly swirling blob of light and color, right?

Well it turns out:

As the lava lamps bubble and swirl, a video camera on the ceiling monitors their unpredictable changes and connects the footage to a computer, which converts the randomness into a virtually unhackable code.

Posted by Cloudflare on Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Who knew that kind of magic was even possible?

Someone smarter than me, that’s who.

Cloudflare might have taken it to a whole new level, but they didn’t actually invent the “LavaRand” concept, which was patented for a few years by another company in the ’90s.

As Cloudflare explains on their blog:

In cryptography, the term random means unpredictable. That is, a process for generating random bits is secure if an attacker is unable to predict the next bit with greater than 50% accuracy (in other words, no better than random chance).

True randomness, they explain, only exists in the natural, physical world. Most encryption companies rely on pseudorandomness, or the generation of random data.

Pseudorandomness is generated through the use of a deterministic algorithm that takes as input some other random value called a seed and produces a larger amount of random output (these algorithms are called cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generators, or CSPRNGs)

The lava lamp system, it seems, may be a little bit of both, which is kind of mind boggling all on its own.

They’ve withstood the test of academic analysis, years of being used in production, attacks by resourced adversaries, and so on.

Be sure to check out this video from Tom Scott about the lamps:

And if you ever find yourself in the Bay Area, you can go see the futuristic cybersecurity in action for yourself.

Since any kind of external disturbance affects the lamps, increasing the randomness of their patterns, the company has no problem with visitors coming to gawk.

Simply enter the lobby of Cloudflare’s San Francisco headquarters and ask to see the lava lamp display.

I definitely want to check that out.

Did this story blow your mind as much as it did mine? Let us know in the comments!

The post This is How Lava Lamps Are Protecting You from Hackers appeared first on UberFacts.

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Scientists Say There Could Be 36 Alien Civilizations in the Milky Way

We’ve all wondered–could there be, not just life, but intelligent life, out there?

And while relative intelligence of life on Earth could be debatable, two scientists from the University of Nottingham have a new theory that suggests there is.

36 different potential civilizations, to be exact.

Image credit: NASA via Rawpixel

How can scientists possibly make a prediction about the number of undiscovered civilizations?

It’s a mathematical theory based on a fifty-year-old equation called the Drake equation.

As Popular Mechanics explains:

Drake’s seven key variables, which range from how many habitable planets exoplanets there are in the galaxy to the amount of time over which intelligent life takes shape, are almost impossible to pin down.

The formula acts more like a framework for the probability of finding life; previous estimates have ranged from zero to over a billion civilizations.

But Professor of Astrophysics Christopher Conselice, his colleague Tom Westby, and their team at the University of Nottingham used new technology and assumptions about our galaxy, the Milky Way, to formulate a new hypothesis.

They published their work last summer in The Astrophysical Journal.

Image credit: NASA via Rawpixel

As quoted in Phys.org, Conselice explains that they based their assumption on the length of time it took a civilization to develop on Earth:

“There should be at least a few dozen active civilizations in our Galaxy under the assumption that it takes 5 billion years for intelligent life to form on other planets, as on Earth.

The idea is looking at evolution, but on a cosmic scale. We call this calculation the Astrobiological Copernican Limit.”

The Copernican limit guides researchers to think on a pretty large scale–where intelligent life develops in either more or less than 5 billion years.

By intelligent life, scientists mean a civilization capable of communication.

On Earth, that development took more than 4.5 billion years, thus the 5 billion year threshold.

Image credit: NASA via Rawpixel

These calculations have been used for years, but the Nottingham team took it one step further, factoring in the specific composition of Earth’s sun.

As Westby explained:

“In the strong criteria, whereby a metal content equal to that of the Sun is needed (the Sun is relatively speaking quite metal rich), we calculate that there should be around 36 active civilizations in our Galaxy.”

When all of the data is combined and analyzed, they believe just 36 exoplanets possess all the right conditions to support the development of an alien civilization.

Of course that means 36 alien civilizations that are enough like us to be recognizable as communicative beings.

Who knows how many are out there that are so different that we might not even recognize them if we saw them.

The problem is, a theory needs to be proven, and the exoplanets are so far away that while we can see them with high powered telescopes and gather some sensory data on them, we don’t yet have the technology to visit them–even with probes.

Image credit: NASA via Rawpixel

If they’re so far away, why do we even care?

Well aside from the intrinsic human need to explore and discover, finding out how many other civilizations co-exist could actually tell us something about how long life on earth will last.

As Professor Conselice points out:

If we find that intelligent life is common then this would reveal that our civilization could exist for much longer than a few hundred years, alternatively if we find that there are no active civilizations in our Galaxy it is a bad sign for our own long-term existence.

By searching for extraterrestrial intelligent life—even if we find nothing—we are discovering our own future and fate

This is very exciting in the world of astronomy.

But according to Popular Mechanics and The Guardian, not every scientist is convinced.

Oliver Shorttle of the University of Cambridge told the news organization that more factors need to be considered—such as how exactly life formed on Earth—before taking the new findings as fact.

That’s science for you. There’s always more to consider.

Even so, it’s pretty cool to have such a specific number, don’t you think?

Do you believe there’s life out there? Let us know your theories in the comments!

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You Might Have Grown Up in the 1990s if These Scenarios Make You Nostalgic

We’re around 40 now, but those who grew up in the ’90s still have a fair amount of nostalgia for the decade.

If these scenarios give you the warm fuzzies of nostalgia, then you were definitely a child of the 90s.

Like WWI before it, the era of the 90s was on the cusp of so much new technology, which would be adopted quickly and advance at lightning speed.

It’s fun to think back on some of the common place items that have all but disappeared.

1. Space travel meant the Shuttle

Sure the new rockets are sleek and fancy and touch-screen.

But there was something undeniably special about the spaceship that took off like a rocket and landed like a plane.

Image credit: NASA via Unsplash

2. Cameras with actual film in them

Sure photographers and artists still use film, but the rest of us have basically gone digital.

Now we can take a MILLION shots of the same exact thing, and never print out a single one!

With one of these bad boys, you just better hope you click fast to get a good shot of that Space Shuttle lifting off.

Image credit: Alberico Bartoccini via Unsplash

3. Books filled with phone numbers

What time is that movie showing? Look up the theater in the phone book and call.

Want a pizza? Unless you have a Pizza Hut flyer–check the phone book. (And OMG – remember free personal pan pizzas if you read enough books?)

If only there were a centralized search tool with all the phone numbers AND the other information so you didn’t even have to call…

via GIPHY

4. Along came the internet

Remember the initial excitement of hearing the dial-up modem start to go? And then the boredom as you waited for it to connect…

As soon as it finally did, your mom needed you to get off the internet because she looked up a number in the phone book and needed to make a call…

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With the widespread adoption of the internet, communication leapfrogged into the new millennium.

5. You could phone home from anywhere, for 25 cents

Remember pay phones? I think the last time I saw a working one was in New Zealand, but before that, it was definitely the movie theater in my home town when I was 16.

Sometimes they even came with their own phone books!

Image credit: Maarten van den Heuvel via Unsplash

6. When you called, people would answer

And then they invented answering machines and caller-ID and suddenly, we could screen our calls if we wanted to.

Sure in 90s we mostly still rolled the dice–unlike now. Who even answers their phone anymore?

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7. Conference calling was a luxury

If you wanted to talk to 2 friends at once, you had to convince your parents to pay for 3-way calling. Of course they wouldn’t, because it was too expensive, so then you had to invite the friend with the rich parents.

Now you don’t even opt in–people stick your number in group texts and your phone explodes for hours.

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8. Going to the mall was like planning a covert operation

You had to plan where to meet and what time and god forbid someone be late. And then if you split up, you better have a plan for when and where to be if you wanted a ride home!

Otherwise you’ll be looking for a pay phone and scrounging for quarters.

Image credit: Dieter de Vroomen via Unsplash

9. Thank goodness they invented cell phones

We had one in our car in the late 90s, just for emergencies. You couldn’t really use it, or you’d go over your minutes and get slammed with a massive overage fee!

Going out of town? Take it, I guess, but for heaven’s sake don’t use it or you’ll rack up roaming charges! Basically, it was for emergencies and the Snake game.

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Media of the 90s was pretty great too. Remember learning how to program the VCR?

10. Tapes or CDs: the eternal question

The two co-existed side-by-side for awhile towards the end of the decade. Of course you WANTED CDs. But tapes were so much cheaper.

And also, did you have a discman? Or a CD player in the car?

We couldn’t quite give up those cassette tapes because no one could record to CDs yet, and anyway “mix CD” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Image credit: Mayte Wisniewskit via Unsplash

11. Oops–recorded over again!

Speaking of mix tapes, how about taping your favorite episodes of Star Trek: the Next Generation? Just me?

But how many times did you accidentally record over something important? (I meant to keep that one!) Or record the wrong channel and instead, you got the 9:00 news?

Image credit: Daniel von Appen via Unsplash

12. Be kind: Rewind

And speaking of tapes, who didn’t love going to Blockbuster on a Friday night? The new releases might cost more, but if you rented 6, the seventh one was free.

Just don’t be late returning it and rack up all the late fees.

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Toys and games were different in the 90s too.

13. Blowing the dust out of Nintendo cartridges

Videos weren’t all you could rent from Blockbuster, after all. You could rent video games, too!

And if you put it in, and it didn’t play quite right? No worries!

Just blow in the cartridge, blow in the machine, clear away the cobwebs and it worked as good as new.

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14. You know what dysentery is because you died of it on the Oregon Trail

When asked what we wanted on our tombstone, a popular answer in my school computer class was “Pepperoni and cheese”.

Why did we use to specify cheese though? The world may never know…

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15. The loss of a Tamagatchi pet hit you like it was real

They were real to us. They were ours, and we loved them. We didn’t want to let them down.

Tamagotchis

16. At camp, we made tie dye

It was a legitimate arts and crafts project.

Image credit: Sharon McCutcheon via Pexels

Every single one of these takes me back to my childhood. If these situations ring true for you, then you definitely grew up in the 90s.

Which ones hit hardest for you? What did we leave out? Let us know in the comments.

The post You Might Have Grown Up in the 1990s if These Scenarios Make You Nostalgic appeared first on UberFacts.