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California is being invaded by crabs. Again. Here's why it keeps happening.

Beaches in Southern California were recently invaded by a creepy-crawly carpet of crustaceans.


People who wanted to take a walk along Newport or Laguna Beach were greeted by thousands of the little red crab-like animals.

The little guys are known as tuna crabs.


Photo by Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images.

Some people also call them langostillas or pelagic red crabs, though they're actually not crabs at all. They're from a related group known as squat lobsters.

Though they look kind of creepy, tuna crabs are pretty harmless.

They're only a few inches long at most, eat plankton, and are food for many different species of animal, including whales, tuna, squid, and sea birds.

Plus, most of the ones that washed ashore seem to already be dead by the time people find them. So no danger — unless, of course, you count the danger to everyone's noses from thousands of dead crabs (eww).

What's weirder than the crabs themselves is that this isn't the first time this has happened.

This is a photo from a beach in 2002, for instance.

This was taken in San Diego in May 2002. Photo by David McNew/Getty Images.

And here's one from as recently as 2015.


It looks like a Red Lobster restaurant disapparated. Photo by Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images.

So what's making them appear? We think it's El Niño.

El Niño is a phenomenon where warm ocean currents in the Pacific get pushed up against the western coast of Central and South America.

Swooosh. GIF from Met Office - Weather/YouTube.

This shoves cooler temperature currents out of the way (and can change weather patterns around the world).

How does this relate to the crabs? Well, the crabs normally like to live in the usually cold shallows off Baja California, but if the water gets really warm — like during El Niño — they'll migrate, moving north in vast swarms towards Southern and Central California.

As the climate changes, we may get more intense episodes of El Niño.

Scientists aren't completely sure how climate change will affect El Niño. While we're certain that the Earth is getting warmer, it's hard to predict how specific weather patterns will change. It's like watching a basketball game: We know the score is going to go up the longer we watch, but it's hard to say whether one particular shot will go in.

We do know that weather patterns will shift, and we know for a fact that the ocean is getting warmer. These factors have led some scientists to predict that future El Niño events will become more intense.

Warmer oceans and — maybe — more intense El Niño events? That might mean we could see these little guys again soon.

Photo from David McNew/Getty Images.

We don't know for sure if we'll see tuna crabs again soon, but we do know that climate change will likely force many different plants and animals to shift their ranges. We've already seen it in butterflies and birds, for instance.

As the planet gets warmer, we're going to see more big changes in the animals and plants around us. So these crabs? They might be an early sign of things to come.

A Korean mother and her son

A recently posted story on Reddit shows a mother confidently standing up for her family after being bullied by a teacher for her culture. Reddit user Flowergardens0 posted the story to the AITA forum, where people ask whether they are wrong in a specific situation.

Over 5,600 people commented on the story, and an overwhelming majority thought the mother was right. Here’s what went down:

“I (34F) have a (5M) son who attends preschool. A few hours after I picked him up from school today, I got a phone call from his teacher,” Flowergardens0 wrote. “She made absolutely no effort to sound kind when she, in an extremely rude and annoyed tone, told me to stop packing my son such ‘disgusting and inappropriate’ lunches."

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YouTube creator Steve Mould shows us what echo looks like through an acoustic camera.

It’s bizarre to think about seeing sound, but nowadays we can do just that. If you haven’t seen an acoustic camera before, that’s because they’re mainly used for industrial purposes, but they’ve been available commercially from gfai tech since 2001.

YouTuber Steve Mould, who has a science channel with over 2.1 million subscribers, took the complicated concept of the acoustic camera and made it easy to understand in his latest video, “Acoustic cameras can SEE sound.”

In the video, Mould explains how an acoustic camera is much like your smartphone's video recorder. But it also creates visual representations of sound emanating from where it’s generated within the video.

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Pop Culture

Woman was mocked online for calling an $80 purse a 'luxury item.' Her response went viral.

"I'm so grateful that my dad was able to get me one. He worked so hard for that money.”

@zohtaco/TikTok

Zoe Gabriel, showing off her new purse from Charles & Keith

Insults of any kind are painful, but jabs towards someone’s financial status are their own breed.

In January 2023, Singapore-based Zoe Gabriel was on the receiving end of this particular flavor of mockery when she posted a TikTok about a purse from local retail brand Charles & Keith—a gift bought for her by her father.

In her excitement, the 17-year-old called the bag, which costs around $80, a “luxury” item as she unwrapped it. Her excitement was sadly cut short by some of the negative comments she received.

One comment seemed to stand out above the rest and prompted Gabriel to post an emotional response video.

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Family

Dad gives his young daughter a 'spa day' while mom and sister are out and people are gushing

"This healed a part of me. Thank you for doing this with your daughter."

Mason Smith pampered his baby girl during her "spa day."

Raising kids is no small feat. Just the basic logistics of caring for a human being from their helpless newborn stage to the full-fledged adult stage is a lot, much less doing the countless other things that will actually help that human thrive.

Parents who go above and beyond to create a nurturing environment and build strong core memories with their kids are inspiring examples for us all, and one dad's spa day with his daughter has people positively gushing.

Mason Smith (@thedadsocial) shared a video of a special spa day he gave his young daughter when her mom and older sister were having their own pampered outing. "Mom and sister went to the salon so I couldn't have her feeling left out," he wrote.

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Jennifer Reardon shares her question that gets her the job everytime.

Job interviews are one of the most stressful situations people go through. A recent poll of over 2,000 people found that job interviews are the fifth most stressful experience a person can have, right after health and financial problems, family issues and running late.

That’s why it is vital to be prepared to handle any questions you have to field during the interview. You’ll be less nervous and make a better candidate. However, many people never think to have a question prepared for their potential employer at the end of the interview when they ask, “Do you have any questions for us?”

Communications director and consultant Jennifer Reardon, who goes by the name @notjenneeree on TikTok, says that she has the perfect question to ask at that pivotal moment at the end of the interview. And she claims that she got the job every time she’s asked the question.

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Photo by Egor Vikhrev on Unsplash

Let's talk about what makes people read articles.

The adage, "If it bleeds, it leads," refers to the media's tendency to headline stories involving death or violence, but it can also be used to point to people's negativity bias. Simply put, people tend to pay more attention to negative news stories than positive ones.

A new study seems to reinforce this idea. And much to our surprise, it's centered on headlines used in Upworthy stories.

Using a public archive of Upworthy headlines and traffic data from 2012 to 2015, two separate teams of researchers analyzed whether people's click tendencies changed with negative or positive words in headlines. In those olden days of Upworthy, a handful of headlines for a single story were tested on the website to see which one would receive the most clicks. The research teams analyzed those results and found that negative words in headlines led to more people clicking on a story (2.3% more), and positive words in headlines led to fewer clicks (1.0% fewer). They also found a preference for headlines that express sadness over those that express joy, fear or anger.

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