Bone-Smashing Trend is Taking Over Social Media

If you’re wondering whether you should hit yourself in the face with a hammer, the answer is no. Yet, that’s what some people on TikTok seem to be doing, with the stated goal of improving their facial appearance. People have been using the term “bone smashing” to refer to the practice of hitting themselves in the face with hammers, bottles, or other blunt objects in the pursuit of beauty. In fact, videos with the phrase “bone smashing tutorial” have already garnered over 267.7 million views on TikTok. Regardless of what people on social media say about this practice, keep in mind that there’s no evidence that breaking the bones in your face will be a smashing success, no pun intended. How are people even justifying the practice of self-pummeling? Well, they appear to be crying Wolff, meaning they’re citing something called "Wolff’s Law." Back in the 1800s, German surgeon Julius Wolff formulated a law based on the observation that your bones are constantly undergoing remodeling, with old or damaged bone continuously being broken down and absorbed back into the body, replaced by newly laid bone. Applying mechanical force or physical stress to your bones can actually increase the rate at which such remodeling occurs, resulting in stronger, thicker bones. So, the bone-headed claim is that you can use a blunt object to cause fractures in your face in a manner that can re-shape it from what it looks like now. It’s essentially being touted as a permanent makeover, allowing you to give yourself more of a “chiseled” look, so to speak. The belief is that when the bones in your face heal from you beating the crap out of them, they will become stronger. What people aren’t being told is that Wolff’s Law is a gross oversimplification of how bones work. In other words, your face won’t collapse if you do weight-bearing exercises, but it just might if you hit yourself in the face with a hammer.

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People Are Upset at Learning What Astronauts do to Dirty Laundry on ISS

Life in space is a challenge that only the best-trained people can undertake, but people on social media are losing their minds since finding out just how astronauts deal with their dirty clothes. While it's understandable that astronauts take a minimal amount of clothing into space, what do they do with their clothing once it’s been worn? At home, we have the luxury of using washing machines to ensure our clothes are always clean and smelling good, but on the International Space Station (ISS), things are a little different. If you think they have water, detergent and a bucket to manually scrub their clothing, think again. They actually don’t do laundry at all. In fact, they have a pretty weird way of dealing with dirty clothing. Because of how much water they would need to use to keep them clean, they instead wear them until they become too soiled to stomach, and then throw them out of the ISS and into the atmosphere where they will burn up upon their re-entry into earth. While that sounds gross, the ISS is carefully temperature controlled so astronauts aren’t sweating a lot, and it’s a somewhat sterile environment. Clothing is typically worn for several days before being discarded, often lasting up to a week for items like underwear. Currently, astronauts discard roughly 160 pounds of clothes per astronaut annually. NASA and Proctor & Gamble are collaborating on developing Tide Infinity, a biodegradable detergent formulated for low-water, micro-gravity and radiation-rich environments to clean astronaut clothing in space.

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How to Clean an Oven With a Single Dishwasher Tablet

Every so often a random cleaning hack will go viral. They normally gain that viral factor because they don’t seem like they would be effective, but many of them actually are. The latest viral cleaning hack involves how to clean your oven with nothing but a dishwasher tablet. Dishwasher tablets are great for removing layers of baked-on grease from your oven’s glass door. Finish detergent tablets seem to be the most popular choice. All you have to do is take the tablet, dunk it into a bowl of warm water, and use the tablet to scrub the oven glass. You can also use the tablet on the non-glass part of the oven door. With just a few scrubs, you’ll begin to see the grease and grime come right off. You may have to use a few tablets to complete the cleaning, because they will begin to crumble and dissolve as you clean. When you’re done scrubbing, simply use a paper towel or a clean cloth to wipe away the residue. Then, follow up with a separate, damp cloth. With minimal effort and cleaning supplies needed, your oven will be sparkling clean in no time.

 

 

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Why You Never See Baby Pigeons in Cities

It’s one of those mysteries we’ve all wondered about at least once: you see thousands of pigeons in the city, but you never see a baby one. No tiny, fluffy chicks begging for crumbs — only full-grown adults. The explanation for why we never see baby pigeons in the city is actually rooted in clever biology and strategic nesting. The primary reason is because they belong to a category of birds known as altricial. Unlike precocial birds — such as ducks or geese, whose yellow ducklings follow their mother as soon as they hatch — pigeons are born completely helpless. While a common sparrow might leave the nest in under four weeks, a young pigeon (known as a squab) stays in the nest for about 35 days. During that time, they transform from blind, hairless hatchlings into birds that are nearly identical in size and plumage to their parents. By the time a pigeon finally decides to take its first flight into the city streets, it’s already an adolescent that looks like a fully-grown adult to the untrained eye. Even if you went looking for them, finding a pigeon nest is a challenge. Descended from wild rock doves that nested on steep cliffs, urban pigeons have adapted to use our architecture as a substitute for mountain peaks. Because they stay in these high-altitude fortresses until they're fully developed, they effectively bypass the “cute baby stage” in the eyes of the public.

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