Since elementary school, we’ve all been taught the “5-Second Rule.” The idea is simple: Food dropped on the floor is still perfectly edible if retrieved in under five seconds. The logic behind the theory, such as it is, is that germs and dirt and pet dander are somehow caught by surprise by the sudden arrival of food and need a few seconds to get their bearings. If you snatch the food up quick enough, they won’t have time to get it “dirty.”

Even as kids, we were skeptical but admit it–you still roll the dice on it every now and again. It’s like shouting “shotgun” before getting into the passenger seat even if it’s only you and the driver. It’s instinctual. But is it true? 

“Let’s go with ‘No,’ there is no truth to the ‘5-second rule’,” says Gillson Sciences Director of Operations Erin Thane. “But I would argue that specifics matter.” 

Wetness matters

As Thane explains, variables such as comparative wetness of said food and type of flooring can swing things one way or another. “Food dropped on a carpet will likely pick up less contamination than food dropped on a smooth surface with the same microbial loads. Sticky or wet foods will likely pick up more contamination than dry foods dropped on the same contaminated surfaces.”

And that’s not all. “There are actually a lot of nuances to this question,” says Thane. “Is it the floor of Windsor Castle or a public bathroom? Was sticky gum dropped and then put back in the mouth, or was it a goldfish cracker? Am I a healthy adult eating something off the ground or an immunocompromised individual?” 

Your floors are dirtier than you think

Perhaps more surprising, according to Thane, is that the floors in your home and floors in public spaces actually don’t vary in cleanliness as much as you’d like to think. As Thane puts it, “We all wear the same shoes–or socks hopefully in the home–across the floors we encounter daily, like the kitchen and bathroom, to other areas or spaces. We are constantly picking up hitchhiking germs and depositing them from one floor to the next.” 

Specifically skin-inhabiting bacteria such as Staphylococcus (which puts the “Staph” in “Staph Infection”) and Corynebacterium (which can cause diphtheria) to gut bacteria such as Bacteroides. Shoes, clothing, and bags can also carry Bacillus or mold or yeast that can cause nausea and vomiting.  

While there are mitigating factors, it’s safe to say that in terms of grossness, the “5-Second Rule” is pretty high up there. 

“I would certainly stay away from any wet, moist or sticky foods which act like a sponge and will immediately cling to any and all dirt, debris and contamination that it comes into contact with,” advises Thane. “However, after everything we have discussed so far, I refer back to the best practice or rule of thumb which is to just not eat any food off the floor.”

The post The 5-Second Rule is scientifically false appeared first on Popular Science.

Doom is much more than a classic, bloodsoaked first-person shooter known for its chaotic action, over-the-top weapons, and challenging boss fights. For some odd (but very enjoyable) reason, it’s served as a benchmark for testing basic computing capabilities for well over 30 years. Name a device——calculators, ATMs, digitally enabled tractors, and even biochips built with E. coli bacteria—and someone has likely coded it to run Doom.

The latest entry in the ever-growing list of Doom compatible contraptions is a double-dose of DIY ingenuity, however. The Linux software engineer known as Miss Molerat recently began tinkering with a pocket-sized medical gadget made specifically to keep track of her menstrual cycle. But unlike many similar commercial products, “Clotty” keeps all personal data strictly on the device itself. It never connects to an external cloud or offloads sensitive information to a company’s servers, thereby preventing any unwanted data harvesting. And it does all this on a custom, uterus-shaped minicomputer running on a Raspberry Pi microcontroller.

“I have one thing that has been bothering me for as long as I’ve been menstruating: despite my cycle being very regular, I somehow manage to get surprised by PMS each and every month anew,” Clotty’s inventor wrote on her website’s blog.

Clotty “does the boring stuff” for her by tracking her period via a Tamagotchi-like digital pet that requires attention and maintenance throughout each month. The pixelated creature’s mood shifts depending on the cycle phase, but it also can go on little quests and offer various minigames in the meantime.

“[It’s] basically some sort of adorably shaped mirror version of my own moods that serves as a reminder that I, too, am just some sort of creature that tries to stay alive and happy,” explained Clotty’s creator.

But why stop there? Clotty is powerful enough to run Doom on its itty-bitty LCD screen, which is thematically perfect given the project’s overarching, bloody motif. This means that, when not keeping up with personal health, a user can also blast through wave after wave of space demons using small onboard sensors.

The inventor admitted that Clotty is still in its “fetal stage,” but she plans to add more features like a menstrual cycle history archive, more games, and even some reproductive health trivia. It’s also a completely open-source project, so anyone can follow her online tutorials and download files for Clotty (and Doom).

The post Play ‘Doom’ on this tiny, uterus-shaped period tracker appeared first on Popular Science.

The concept of a corporate psychopath is eerily recognizable, depending on your work history. It’s also notoriously misunderstood. The archetype of the manipulative, self-serving manager has regularly resurfaced in popular culture for decades, but concrete evidence supporting the wider concept is debatable. For example, a research study went viral in 2016 after estimating upwards of 1-in-5 business employees fit the “psychopath” bill, only to be retracted two years later. Additionally, psychiatrists widely agree that only about 1 percent of the general population truly can be considered clinically psychopathic.

That said, many of the people determined to claw their way to the top of the company ladder display at least some of the trademark psychopathic behaviors. Many theorists have convincingly argued this has a lot to do with corporate capitalism’s foundational principles, which leave it easily exploited by the most ruthless and manipulative among us.

Clive Boddy, one of the world’s foremost investigators of corporate psychopathy, recently took this idea to its logical historical conclusion. In a study recently published in the Asian Journal of Business Ethics, Boddy reviewed one of toxic corporate leadership’s earliest documented examples—and he makes today’s nightmare coworkers sound tame in comparison.

Who was Jeronimus Cornelisz?

Meet Jeronimus Cornelisz, an all-time contender for World’s Worst Boss. According to archival accounts, the 17th century Dutchman Cornelisz embodied every core corporate psychopath characteristic over 400 years ago while working for the conglomerate that started it all: the Dutch East India Company.

Established in Amsterdam in 1602, the Dutch East India Company is arguably the world’s first multinational, shareholder-owned company. It quickly amassed enough funds and power to rival most sovereign countries through the import and export of spices, tea, luxury items, coffee, wine, and enslaved populations. The Dutch East India Company eventually exerted enough influence to wage its own wars, mint its own currency, form colonies, as well as arrest and execute convicts.

All of this was made possible through a vast fleet of ships,but even the best outfitted vessels sometimes fell afoul of nature. In June 1629, a Dutch East India Company’s flagship called Batavia collided with a reef off the Western Australian coast. Nearly 300 survivors made it to the nearby island shores, but their remote location ensured they wouldn’t survive without help. The ship’s senior officers soon set off in an open longboat on a 1,900-mile journey to present-day Jakarta, then the Dutch East Indies’ capital. Before leaving, they appointed under-merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz to the top corporate position in their absence.

Mutiny, murder, and malignant narcissism

Unbeknownst to Batavia’s departing senior crew, Cornelisz had already spent weeks scheming on ways to incite a mutiny. The plan was to take control of the vessel then steer its copious stores of gold and silver to a new life. Cornelisz apparently viewed getting marooned as an inconvenient detour, and quickly got to work on his hostile takeover.

According to firsthand accounts, Cornelisz immediately consolidated power by swapping fellow council members with loyalists and requiring them to pledge an oath of allegiance to him. Next, he tricked suspected opponents under the direction of a soldier named Wiebbe Hayes to search a nearby island for supplies, then left them to die.

Although his revised plan required any impending rescue ship, Cornelisz’s ultimate goal remained the same—get as far away as possible, then start his own kingdom using riches plundered from Batavia. Over the ensuing months, Cornelisz directed his gang to kill more than 100 of the shipwrecked men, women, and children. Cornelisz often justified the murders under the pretense of conserving food and water, when in actuality he was continuing to eliminate perceived threats. Meanwhile, some of the surviving women were subjected to sexual abuse.

However, Cornelisz underestimated his abandoned compatriots. As the operatically psychopathic Cornelisz terrorized his group of survivors and scrounged for supplies, Hayes’ team reportedly discovered freshwater wells and hunted local wallabies, seals, and fish. The two sides subsequently squared off on multiple occasions after learning of each others’ continued existence until a rescue ship finally arrived in October 1629. After nearly three months, only about a third of Batavia’s original passengers and crew were left.

Cornelisz receives his company review

Management ultimately decided Cornelisz wasn’t internal promotion material, even by Dutch East India Company standards. Nearly everyone involved in his reign of terror was executed. As for Cornelisz and his closest loyalists, authorities eventually hanged them, but not before cutting off their hands.

The tragedy of the Batavia is an admittedly extreme case study, but Boddy argued that it illustrates how corporate structures have facilitated and encouraged psychopathic behaviors since the invention of the corporation itself.

“The same playbook we see in toxic workplaces today appears in this case from 1629,” he said. “He removed opponents, rewarded loyalists, created fear, manipulated followers and pursued power at any cost.”

A corporate (psychopath) case study

In recent years, some historians have expressed doubts about details in the Batavia saga after reviewing available evidence and recontextualizing cultural dynamics. Instead of focusing on the machinations of a single ruthless corporate psychopath, they contend Batavia is more accurately a case study in group desperation. But even when viewed under this lens, the chilling event is still a cautionary tale about corporate capitalism’s darker underpinnings.

“Perhaps the most striking finding is that another leader facing the same circumstances achieved completely different outcomes,” Boddy said. “This was effectively a natural experiment in leadership. One group prospered while the other descended into murder and abuse.”

The post Psychologist found the first corporate psychopath—a 17th century Dutch mutineer appeared first on Popular Science.

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