Manon Blackman wrote about a moving food truck:

• Instead of using cash to purchase food from the moving food truck in Portugal, you pay through physical exercise.
• A cheese burger requires you to run along with the food truck for 4.2 kilometers. Want ketchup on the burger? That will be another 500 meters.
• The truck is the brain child of an anti-obesity group in Portugal that wants to raise awareness about the amount of exercise needed to burn off calories from common meals.
• The group wants to point out the oddity of the rise of food that moves across cities – so that people can move even less.
• In one day the truck “sold” 20 cheeseburgers, 32 pizza slices, and 50 cups of soda. Hungry patrons ran 406 kilometers and burned 23,000 calories to earn their food.

Read more here.

Source: Runner’s World

Via: Mental Floss

Mark Wilson writes that our computers aren’t always being completely…honest:

• Facebook has a system which will do a security check of your account. While engaging in the check it shows a loading animation that lasts about ten seconds.
• The thing is…it doesn’t actually take the system ten seconds to do the check. It’s done much faster. But Facebook is afraid that if it didn’t show the loading animation for as long, users may think that nothing serious is being done to check an account’s security.
• The lost time can add up. If half of all Facebook users were to do the security check, and it showed the loading animation or five seconds longer than it had to, that’s 29,000 days’ worth of wasted time.
• “Wasted” is somewhat debatable of course. After all users get value out of the imposed wait. One study found that users preferred it if dating websites pretended to take extra time to find matches for them.
• The unease with instantaneous results is similar to the discomfort that a dining patron might feel, for example, if an expensive restaurant were to serve food mere seconds after it had been ordered.
• Many other companies engage in the practice. Wells Fargo had to slow down its security retinal scans to build confidence in the strength of the system.

Read more, and find out about the limits of the loading screen over here.

Source: Fast Company

The Republican Party Convention kicks off this week, followed by the democratic convention next week. Strip clubs are preparing for a lot of business:

• Just like the hotel and restaurant industries, strip clubs see surges in demand during big events like NFL games or political conventions.
• And they make sure to decorate and dress for the occasion. Strip clubs will be sporting the red, white, and blue of the American flag that many convention goers will be waving.
• It’s not just political officials who may be asking for discrete services. Media figures, and convention delegates make up part of the flood.
• Local officials understand the financial importance of events like this and at least in the case of Cleveland, Ohio, strip clubs have been given permission to stay open to 4am – later than the normal 2:30am.

Read more here.

Source: Yahoo!

Miquel Ros wrote about floating airports:

• The problem with airports is that they’re most useful in areas that are the least likely to have space for them – densely populated urban cities.
• But many of the world’s top cities are also located close to large bodies of open water.
• Some people have long been trying to put two and two together and build floating airports.
• The technology is there – after all, we figured out aircraft carriers.
• And while a floating airport would have to be a lot larger because commercial airliners need a lot more runway, they should be easier to build since they can be stationary and don’thave to be able to conquer territory.
• Since such an airport would be built on the water it could power itself using the entirely environmentally friendly power of the waves.
• You’d have to connect the airport to the land of course, but that could be done through underwater tunnels.
• As with most exciting ideas the number one problem is finding an affordable way to make it.

Read more here.

Source: CNN

Perhaps seeing how popular Donald Trump became by yelling “you’re fired”, a reality TV show has been launched in the Chinese province of Shanxi writes The Economist:

• Contestants on the show are local city officials within the province who have to convince judges that their city is the best city.
• The studio audience then votes. The city that wins gets to play host to a lucrative tourism-development conference.
• This is unprecedented on many levels. Local officials engaging with the public is rare enough. But to have their performance evaluated by the masses is unchartered territory for the Chinese government.
• Contestants have risen to the challenge. One suffered from a slipped disc, but continued to rehearse her speech flat on her back.
• The government seems to allow it because the province’s economy is slowing. The show is great exposure and a boost for tourism.
• The people, for their part, wonder if it’s possible to arrange something similar, but include all the provinces, and maybe even call it an “election”.

Read more here.

Source: The Economist

We’re living a past decade with a Tarzan movie in the theater, and Pokémon all the rage. Whatever happened to Limp Bizkit, another relic of that time? Adam Kovac looked into it:

• Limp Bizkit was a pioneer of the nü-metal genre – which was almost entirely white, male, and was incredibly angry. The genre has less relevance in a time of safe spaces and cultural appropriation.
• It’s especially bad because while its predecessor – grunge – was angry for what seemed like good reasons, nü-metal’s anger seemed to be directed at well-off middle-class sub-urban parents.
• And nü-metal is part of a wider genre that prizes authenticity. But once Limp Bizkit achieved mainstream popularity and its members started hanging out with A-list celebrities, it seemed to lose that authenticity and its wider fan-base.
• It’s not all about the genre though. The band had its own internal drama as its guitarist Wes Borland left to make really bad music, and the first post Borland album saw sales crater. By the time he returned it was too late.

Read more about a possible resurgence over here.

Source: AV Club

Pokémon Go is the latest entry in Nintendo’s Pokémon series, and it uses geolocation and mixed reality to bring the world of Pokémon to life.

• The game requires budding Pokémon trainers to go to specific locations and catch Pokémon.
• Those who struggle with depression sometimes have trouble finding even the energy to get out of bed.
• However, the game has served as effective motivation and some users are reporting that trying to train their virtual pets is helping combat their depression.

Read more here. There are also those, of course, who weren’t prepared for this kind of physical activity and are complaining about sore legs.

Source: Attn

The Economist wrote about India’s film industry:

• India’s top three male actors all share the last name Khan – but are unrelated.
• Each has staked out his own date on India’s movie release calendar. The brawny fighter, Salman Khan (right), gets Eid (sure enough his latest film, Sultan, premiered two days ago).
• The intellectual one, Aamir Khan (center), gets Christmas.
• And the biggest of them all, the romancer Shahrukh Khan (left), gets Diwali.
• Their dominance of these dates continue because these are the festivals when Indians are most likely to splurge on a movie. And getting the most bankable stars helps ensure success.
• The Indian film industry can also be superstitions. Stars that are thought to be lucky frequently make cameo appearances.
• Some particularly superstitious heroes go as far as changing the way their name is spelled – Ajay Devgan may spell his name in the credits as Ajay Devgn because the alternate spelling is thought to bring better luck.

Read more here.

Source: The Economist

Reddit started a thread about jobs that most people don’t know exist. Some of the more interesting ones include:

• Drivers who will get into the cars of those who are afraid of bridges, and drive the cars over the bridge for them.
• Music composers for slot machine sound effects.
• Stapler remover – someone who removes staples from masses of documents to prepare them for scanning.
• Shabbos goy – a non-Jewish person who will do things like push the buttons on a lift, since certain interpretations of the Torah forbid such actions during the Shabbat.
• If you buy something like a watch worth several thousand dollars, instead of the seller mailing it to you – and be liable for paying duties – someone will be hired to wear it, fly it over to you, and give it to you as a “gift”.
• Hunters responsible for shooting wildlife near airport runways.
• A “Bovine Identification and Exit Prevention Specialist” – responsible for ensuring that cows don’t escape from their designated grazing areas.

Read the full thread with hundreds of weird jobs that secretly make society work over here.

Source: Reddit

Chavie Lieber wrote about Yankee Candle and its rise as a successful multinational scented candle company:

• Yankee Candle got its start in 1969 when a 17-year-old couldn’t afford to buy his mother a Christmas gift and so he made her a candle using a milk carton as a mold.
• A family friend saw the candle and wanted to buy it – and thus began a business empire.
• Today the company grosses $832 million a year in sales, accounts for almost half of all candle sales in the United States, and is growing rapidly.
• Part of the success is due to the stores. The company tries to evoke an emotional connection of homely authenticity with customers and looks to Disney’s branding efforts as an example.
• 80% of its customers are women. They’re mostly between the ages of 30 and 50, are homeowners, and have families. Holiday themed scents like Christmas cookie are particularly popular with the group.
• The company once tried to expand its market to men by releasing scents such as Riding Mower and Man Town. It was successful – with female buyers who said that the candles smelled like perfect lumberjack boyfriends.
• New scents are released four times a year and range from the creative – “Clean Cotton” – to the eclectic – “Child’s Wish” and “Schnitzel with Noddles”.

Read more about the company, its history, what happened to its founder, its most rabid fans, and the challenges that lie ahead over here.

Source: Racked