I've been living in New York for about two years now.

And while Shake Shack's shackburger has become my go-to fast food in the city, I often feel like there's something missing from my greasy feast.

That's why the minute I get home to Chicago, I immediately seek out my favorite chain back home in the Midwest: Culver's.

To get a good look at what makes this burger chain — dare I say it — better than In-N-Out or Shake Shack, I visited Wisconsin, where I had my first Culver's experience many years ago.

SEE ALSO: A regional Midwest chain was just named one of America's best burger restaurants

DON'T MISS: We visited the regional chain that Southerners say is better than In-N-Out and Shake Shack — here's the verdict

To start my culinary adventure, I found a Culver's in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, home of the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, the alma mater of Culver's CEO Craig Culver.

We went around 4:30 p.m. on a rainy day, and the place was already packed for the evening. The menu board greeted us with a host of options from frozen treats to full meals, called "baskets," that came with drinks and a side.

After placing our orders, we went to fill up our soda. Culver's is known for its signature root beer, which tastes even better with a dollop of Culver's vanilla frozen custard.

Many American students are gearing up for their first day back to school.

While the start of the school year differs by country, the first day back is normally a big day no matter where you're from. It's usually marked by excitement — or perhaps some dread if you don't want to give up your vacation — and a bit of fanfare.

Take a look below to see the first day of school in 12 countries around the world.

Belarus: Students perform during an event for the first day of school in Minsk.

France: Kids enter the primary school Jules Ferry in Fontenay-sous-Bois, near Paris.

Gaza Strip: Palestinian children sit inside a classroom on the first day of school at al-Shafi'i school in Gaza City.

How do you pour a beer? Turns out this popular pouring method — that results in little to no foam — is completely wrong. And can actually cause stomach issues!

Max Bakker, a Master Cicerone (think a sommelier for beer) and High-End Educator at Anheuser-Busch InBev shows the correct technique. 

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• Renters often pay a broker 10% to 20% of annual rent for an apartment in New York City.

• Two former Google employees founded a peer-to-peer rental site to get rid of this fee.

• Outgoing tenants are paid up to half a month's rent for finding a new tenant, either by their landlord or the incoming tenant.

There's a seemingly endless supply of apartment buildings lining the streets of New York City. And yet, finding a livable rental is often an exhaustive and wickedly expensive process.

Many apartment hunters turn to real estate brokers, who charge a fee of 10% to 20% of annual rent for their services. Slap a 15% broker fee — the industry standard — on top of the $3,500 median monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, and you're handing over nearly $10,000 right out of the gate, not to mention the security deposit or moving costs.

Joinery, an apartment listing marketplace founded by former Google employees Julia Ramsey and Vianney Brandicourt, aims to fix this.

Ramsey, 31, and Brandicourt, 32, met while working on a project years ago in Google's Paris office. They stayed in touch when Brandicourt left the company to start the analytics teams at Spotify and then Foursquare.

Meanwhile, for the first time in seven years of living in New York City, Ramsey found a great apartment "through a friend of a friend" instead of a broker, she told Business Insider. To her surprise, the process was enjoyable.

"First of all, there was that element of trust, but also I didn't have to pay any crazy fees associated with an apartment, it was just a very clean transaction," Ramsey said. "So I started to think to myself, how can I actually systematize this? How can I add a social layer to apartment finding, at scale?"

In 2015, she left her position as a senior analytical lead at Google to launch Joinery with Brandicourt. The company has two missions, says Ramsey. First, to remove exorbitant broker fees for incoming tenants, and second, to partner with landlords who will pay their outgoing tenants to find a replacement for their unit.

"The median New Yorker is spending 65% of their income on rent, which is absolutely staggering. When you add fees on top of that, it's kind of a kick in the teeth because you're already struggling and living paycheck to paycheck," Ramsey said. "I just felt like the current system was unfair ... so just having to pay a fee on top of that was a little bit financially onerous."

Similar to other popular apartment rental aggregators, such as StreetEasy, renters can scroll through listings on Joinery, filtering by neighborhood, price range, amenities, and move-in date. But instead of connecting users with a broker, Joinery connects them directly to a departing tenant.

"I thought it just intuitively made sense to be able to find an apartment from other renters, because the person who's been living in that unit is probably going to know a ton about the apartment and give you information on the management company, they can tell you where to put your air conditioner, and how to get the mail, all these kinds of details around the apartment," Ramsey said.

Joinery currently has partnerships with a dozen landlords across the city who have agreements to pay their renters a fee for finding a new tenant.

Only about half of the current listings are in buildings with landlord partnerships, though. When there isn't a partnership in place, the incoming tenant pays a fee to the outgoing tenant — a maximum of half a month's rent — through Joinery's platform. Joinery requires all outgoing tenants to receive permission from their landlord before listing their unit.

Each listing displays the fees the incoming renter will pay, and calculates how much they're saving by choosing Joinery over a traditional broker.

Eventually, Joinery will take 20% of that fee, Ramsey says, but the company is forgoing it for now in order to scale. Though the company has no immediate plans for bringing the service to other cities, Ramsey says they regularly receive emails from renters in Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, asking when it will be available for them.

"Our No. 1 goal is to grow the number of listings on our site," Ramsey said. "We want to become a marketplace where there's a ton of variety and we want to basically save people money and make money for renters as well."

Since launching two years ago, Ramsey says Joinery has successfully filled over 300 apartments, saving renters "well over $1 million" in fees, assuming the same apartments had been filled by brokers instead.

SEE ALSO: Why a month's free rent isn't such a good deal

DON'T MISS: A self-made millionaire who retired at 37 says buying a home was 'probably the worst financial decision' he ever made

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Usain Bolt may have lost his final race, but that doesn't diminish what he's done in his legendary career.

Bolt captured nine gold medals during his Olympics career, holds the world record in the 100-meter dash, and set a new standard for what it means to be a sprinter.

The Jamaican sprinter has been clocked at a maximum speed of 27.7 mph. We decided to compare this incredible athletic accomplishment to a few animals and other humans to put his power into perspective.

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NOW WATCH: Here are all the animals Usain Bolt can outrun

When it comes to finding a place to live, homebuyers can usually expect to pay up for safety.

Niche, a company that researches and collects reviews on cities, recently revealed the safest cities in the country in a 2017 ranking. To compile the list, Niche analyzed public crime data — including larceny, vehicular theft, and homicide rates — from sources like the US Census and the FBI, and considered over 100 million reviews from users, who rated how safe they feel in their cities.

The ranking suggests that California, with seven of the top 15 cities, is one of the safest states in the nation. It's also home to several of the priciest housing markets in the country. Two California cities at the top of the ranking, Irvine and Thousand Oaks, have median listing prices at least twice the national figure of $259,000.

Check out the chart below to see how much it costs to put down roots in the 15 safest cities in America.

SEE ALSO: The 25 safest American cities to live in

DON'T MISS: The hidden costs of owning a home in the 16 biggest cities in America

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NOW WATCH: The 15 most expensive ZIP codes in America

We all have annoying habits, and travel tends to bring out the worst in people.

If you have any sympathy for your flight attendants, who, day in and day out, are privy to some of the most extreme human behavior, you'd make an effort to do better.

The first step is knowing just what you're doing wrong.

Luckily for you, we asked flight attendants everywhere to share the annoying things they wish passengers would stop doing, and more than 60 were happy to chime in.

Here are 25 things you may not have even known you were doing wrong, and one thing you can probably stop worrying about:

DON'T MISS: Flight attendants share 25 things they'd love to tell passengers but can't

SEE ALSO: Flight attendants share 13 of their favorite travel hacks

Hogging the overhead bins

"Put the suitcases in the overhead and put your small bags underneath the seat in front so we don't have to run out of space and have to check bags."

Not saying hello

"I wish passengers would acknowledge the crew when they board."

Poor timing

"Stop trying to hand us trash on the beverage cart or asking us to take your trash while we're handing out food."

Photographer Carolyn Jones has a new respect for nurses after conducting more than 100 interviews with the medical professionals.

"They see us holistically and with an intimacy that few other people ever will," she told Business Insider. 

Jones first began to understand the nurses role in healthcare after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005.  "I always thought that nurses just take our temperature and blood pressure, or hold our hand and comfort us while we're waiting for the doctor to show up. But I was so wrong," she said.

So when given the opportunity by the health care company Fresenius Kabi to create a project that would celebrate nurses, Jones signed up. Her photographs and on-camera interviews have been collected in "The American Nurse." These images show a new side of the profession.

SEE ALSO: Stunning photos show what it's like inside a Chinese factory that makes American toys

Tonia Faust, Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, Louisiana

"Louisiana State Penitentiary is the only maximum security prison that we have in Louisiana. We have the death row that's here, and we have about 5,200 offenders here. In June 2011 they appointed me the as the hospice program coordinator. It's an exceptional program, we are the only accredited Louisiana DOC facility hospice program, and what makes our program so unique is our [inmate] hospice volunteers. [They] go through a 40-hour educational process, body mechanics, assisted daily living activities, and show them through the grief and dying process."

"[Studies] show that our anxiety medications and pain management medications were a lot lower here at the Louisiana State Penitentiary — and we feel that it's because through Warden Cain allowing this [hospice] program, that our patients' anxiety levels are much less because they have someone at their bedside. They're pain management is top priority, to make sure that when they do pass, it's as pain free as possible."

Goldie Baker Huguenel, Interim LSU Public Hospital, New Orleans, Louisiana

"I was born in New Orleans and have always lived here. I am probably the oldest nurse around here."

"[When] Hurricane Katrina hit, [she was] mean. Dealing with Katrina was like dealing with the death of a city. Some things die and never come back. What I remember most about being in the hospital during Katrina was that not one nurse would leave until each and every patient had been evacuated. The patients in the ICU on the twelth floor were carried down on spine boards in the hot, dark, slippery stairwells, and everyone did a hero's job of it. There was no panic, no one screaming to get out or anything like that. It was amazing."

Venus Anderson, Nebraska Medical Center / LifeNet, Omaha, Nebraska

"Four years ago, my father was in a motorcycle accident. He was injured badly...and another flight team [of nurses] went out to get him. He did not survive, he died at the trauma center. And that shook my whole foundation because my father was the most amazing man. When he died, it changed everything. That was the first time, when I came back to work, and everything was personal."

"I use to, when we would go somewhere, I would not want to know a name and make it personal. But after dad died, I made a point to talk to the families before I took their loved ones. I took those two minutes to go out and say 'My name is Venus, I'm going to be flying your husband, brother, mother, wife, to Omaha. This is what I'm going to do, this is how you're going to know we made it ok — I'll call you and let you know how it went.'"

"That's something I never did before. When I would get to the trauma center, I would call the family every time — because the one thing that killed me, when that whole process [with my dad] was going on, was not knowing what was going on with your loved one. It's a piece in transport nursing that gets missed a little bit, because we are so about moving fast — and it's important to move fast, but, before where I may have thought that was a little bit of a waste of time, after that point, it wasn't a waste of time anymore — it was important."

If you live in San Francisco, your Instagram has undoubtedly lit up in Technicolor in recent days. The city is going wild for a new pop-up museum, The Color Factory.

The candy-coated exhibit includes 15 interactive "experiences" — each centered on a different color — spread across two stories and 12,000 square feet. It runs through September, but good luck getting tickets. The Color Factory has sold out for the month of August, and scalpers on Craigslist are selling tickets, originally priced at $32, for as much as $175 a pop.

We stepped into The Color Factory to see what the buzz is about.

SEE ALSO: A preppy apparel startup is defying J. Crew's curse and dominating the millennial market

This is one museum where you won't be publicly shamed for taking photos.

Jordan Ferney, creator of lifestyle blog Oh Happy Day and the brains behind The Color Factory, told Business Insider that everything from the lighting temperature to the high-end cameras placed strategically across the exhibition, was conceived with Instagrammers in mind.

It comes on the heels of the Museum of Ice Cream, a pop-up exhibition that started in New York and spread to the West Coast over the summer. It sparked its own social-media mania.

We descended the rainbow-clad staircase and prepared to enter a world of color.

First, we registered with The Color Factory and received our polka-dotted ID cards. We could use the cards to active the cameras scattered throughout.

Andrew Zimmern, the host of "Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern" on the Travel Channel, is spending his new season traveling around the US searching for interesting foods to try. In his interview with Business Insider, he gave us advice on finding the best food when you travel. Following is a transcript of the video.

Food is good. Food with the story is better. Food with the story that you haven't heard about is better than that and food with the story that you haven't heard about but that you can relate to is best of all. 

And when you ask people in markets what they are making, you start learning and engaging in a discussion about food and culture that I just find endlessly fascinating so I'm big on markets, I'm big on exploration, I'm big on going to the last stop on the subway - I mean that figuratively although sometimes it actually is literal. But the further you get away from the center of anything, when you're out there on the fringes of stuff, you learn the most. I mean, that's where the freaks and the geeks and you know — the alt-universe people and the — I just find the most fascinating things out on the fringes of society and I would encourage people to be curious travelers.

When we are traveling, I believe we become the best versions of ourselves. I think the power of travel is transformative. We're less risk-averse, we ask more questions, we have to. We are willing to try new things, we have experiences and we bring that home and hopefully we don't forget it.

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Most parents intend to raise perfectly polished, well-mannered children — just like you see in all those movies about Victorian England.

But sometimes life gets in the way, and you’re just too busy or exhausted to remind little Johnny to chew his hamburger with his mouth closed, for goodness sake.

“Everybody’s so stressed out today,” said Barbara Pachter, a business-etiquette expert and the author of “The Communication Clinic.” “If you can get everybody at the table for dinner, it’s an accomplishment. Sometimes some of this stuff just falls by the wayside.”

We asked Pachter and Daniel Post Senning, the author of “Manners in a Digital World” and the great-great-grandson of Emily Post, to tell us about the seemingly old-fashioned manners that today’s parents might be forgetting about.

Don’t feel ashamed if you haven’t made these a priority for your kids — by adopting them yourself, you can still act as a role model.

SEE ALSO: 4 outdated etiquette rules no one needs to follow anymore

Saying 'you're welcome'

Most parents teach their kids to say "please" and "thank you." But learning to say "you're welcome" is just as important.

Here's Senning: "It's not always about minimizing the thanks — 'it was no problem,' 'it's nothing,' 'it was no trouble.' And it's not about trumping the thanks — 'oh, no, no, thank you.' It's really important to receive thanks well also and it's okay to say, 'you're welcome; it was my pleasure.'"

Senning said: "When you receive someone's gratitude well, you participate in their happiness."

Making eye contact

Instagram can wait.

"If you're talking to somebody, you need to look at them," Pachter said. "Regardless of whether you have your phone or not. And if you have your phone, then you definitely need to put the phone down and look at people."

Saying 'excuse me'

"We will make mistakes; accidents will happen," Senning said. "How we handle them says as much or maybe more about us than how we handle our successes."

Parents should teach their kids to use these words whenever they're guilty of a breach of etiquette — like leaving the table in the middle of dinner.

"You can really transform what would otherwise be a rude or impolite act into a chance to show some courtesy," Senning added.

The act of "going on a diet" usually works in the short term, but rarely lasts. Oftentimes, people gain the weight they lost back soon after "going off" their diet.

So why do diets fail?

Business Insider reached out to registered dietitian Whitney Stuart of Whitness Nutrition about the problem.

Stuart told us that the whole concept of a diet is backwards, because in most cases, what society thinks of as a "diet" is "based on the idea of less." That could mean cutting calories or food groups, having to weigh every ingredient, or only eating at specific times — the list goes on.

Most fad diets have strict, specific rules. Ultimately, Stuart said, these diets tend to be unsustainable for long periods of time, let alone the rest of your life.

The idea of deprivation, ingrained in many diets, "gives us control over a situation" in the short term, Stuart said, perhaps leading people to think, "I haven't eaten any cookies, I'm so good."

"This short-term diet doesn't become a habit," she said, "and 10 days — maybe two weeks — later, we see that deprivation rebound when self-control finally dwindles. Because that is limited."

At this point, Stuart says, people often binge. People tell themselves, "I haven't eaten any cookies in two weeks, I deserve one! I earned this cookie!"

Stuart told Business Insider this puts the person back at square one, and sometimes in a negative state of mind because they may now feel guilty for eating too many cookies. They view themselves as "bad" or "out of control," she said.

"You and your goodness (or lack thereof) are not affected by what you eat," Stuart said. "This mindset is so dangerous."

It's true there are some things we should try to avoid, she said. Endless fast food, concentrated sweets, dangerous drugs, and excessive alcohol probably shouldn't be consumed on the regular.

"But we shouldn't promote the deprivation-based diets as the only successful tool that will provide weight loss, because it's not," Stuart said.

How do you stick to a diet?

Stuart recommends making small but sustainable changes, staying away from anything extreme, and building up small changes over time. The kicker is, she said, most people don't want to make the slower lifestyle changes to last.

"Most people would rather have a horrible 10 days of a raw, low-carb, no salt, no sugar, no water diet and return to their old habits than really have to address that $150 Frappuccino bill they're racking up each month," Stuart said.

She recommends easing into things:

• Instead of jumping straight to a vegan diet, Stuart says to commit to two handful of veggies at every dinner meal, at least three days a week first. It doesn't mean becoming a vegan isn't possible; the slower change will make it more likely to last.
• Instead of a 21-day sugar "cleanse," Stuart suggests trying to "slowly wean yourself off of all six pumps of vanilla in your 'breakfast latte' and eventually, make yourself some eggs at home."
• Instead of jumping on the paleo diet trend, Stuart said, just clean out all the processed and packaged snacks and replace them with sliced carrots, celery, and bell peppers.

Ultimately, smaller changes over a longer period of time can land you on the same diet you wanted in the first place, but in a sustainable way.

SEE ALSO: 5 easy tricks a dietitian uses to stick to her diet when eating out

DON'T MISS: I stopped eating sugar and processed foods — and lost 10 pounds in 6 weeks

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NOW WATCH: Even more ice is about to break off of Antarctica — and it’s what scientists feared most

President Donald Trump is spending time in Bedminster, New Jersey as the White House is undergoing renovations.

In 1947, President Harry Truman noticed the White House was hardly structurally sound, and once he won the 1948 presidential election, he commissioned a group of engineers to tackle the issue.

What followed was a massive, four-year-long gut renovation of the Executive Mansion— the results of which make up much of the White House we know today.

This article has been updated from its original version.

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Think for a moment before you text your friends about this weekend.

When was the last time you cleaned your phone?

Chances are, it has more types of bacteria on it than the average toilet seat.

If you're like most people, you check your phone at least a few times an hour, if not far more than that. Apple data indicates users unlock phones an average of 80 times per day and you probably touch that screen thousands of times every day. Your phone travels with you on the subway, on city streets, and into the bathroom — where a great many people keep using it.

You probably even pick up your phone after touching that most disgusting of household objects, the kitchen sponge.

Every time you pick it up, you transfer whatever microbes and viruses are on your hand. If you talk on your phone, you breathe out the microorganisms living in your respiratory tract (but who talks on the phone these days?).

Toilet seat comparisons are fun but really should be no surprise, since your phone comes into contact with so much more of yourself and the world — and toilet seats are usually cleaned more frequently.

Studies have found many different types of bacteria and viruses on phones. It's common to find bacteria that live on skin and in the respiratory tract, as well as bacteria that live in fecal matter, according to Philip Tierno, a microbiologist and pathologist at the New York University School of Medicine.

And while most of those bacteria won't make you sick, they're not all completely harmless. Various studies have found E. coli, MRSA, Streptococcus, and many other species living on mobile phones.

Studies by various consumer groups have found all kinds of bacteria as well. British group Which? swabbed 90 phones, keyboards, and tablets and found Staph and E. Coli in high quantities.

To be clear, most of us aren't getting sick from our phones, just like we don't usually get sick from the potentially harmful bacteria on our sponges, sheets, or towels. Part of that is because many of the microbes living on our phones are our own — though using a sick friend's phone would be a great way to pick up a cold or flu virus. But those bacteria are there and in some cases, they could potentially make someone seriously ill. There's research indicating phones could transmit antibiotic-resistant pathogen infections in hospitals.

"It is wise to periodically clean your phone," Tierno told Business Insider. "I [clean] mine at the end of each day with just a wipe."

Most phone companies generally don't recommend using harsh cleaners like alcohol on your delicate touchscreen, but there are other recommended cleaning products that can get the job done. A microfiber cloth will remove most (though not all) bacteria. And it might not be company recommended, but some microbiologists say the occasional antibacterial wipe couldn't hurt.

As for frequency, Tierno recommended a daily wipedown. If you miss it once or twice, that's okay. But try to remember.

"If you’re not cleaning your phone, you should," he said.

SEE ALSO: Your kitchen sponge is even grosser than you thought — here's how often you should replace it

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NOW WATCH: All the nasty things inside a pimple — and why you should stop popping them

Alinea is a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Chicago that serves up unique dishes to diners. For dessert, they offer items like edible helium balloons and an edible work of art that the chefs paint on your table. Here's a look at what you can expect from the "Paint" dessert at the best restaurant in America. 

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The sleepy town of Brisbane, California, located on the outskirts of Silicon Valley, is poised to become the next major housing destination in the Bay Area, with help from the tech industry.

Leaders from nearly three dozen tech companies, including Salesforce, Yelp, AT&T, Comcast, and Square, signed off on a letter to local officials last week, urging them to consider a development proposal that would add seven million square feet of commercial space and 4,400 housing units to the small city, according to the San Francisco Business Times.

The Brisbane Baylands project has received sharp criticism from people living in Brisbane, who don't want to see an influx of tech workers change the character of their neighborhoods. The project would more than triple the city's population of about 4,600 over the next 30 years.

At a meeting of the Brisbane City Council on August 8, local officials heard from residents and housing advocates in a meeting to decide the proposal's fate. Protesters came from across the region, passing out "Build housing" stickers and carrying signs that read "Boycott Brisbane!"

"We are a little town. We are unique. There is no other place like Brisbane until we get far away from here," said resident Carolyn Parker in an interview with local paper, The Daily Journal.

"We did not create the housing crisis in the Bay Area and we should not be the solution to the entire Bay Area's housing crisis," resident Karen Cunningham told the Journal.

An increase in housing supply could bring other changes to the waterfront community. The additional 4,400 units of homes and apartments could lower the value of existing homes.

City council members pushed the vote on the mixed-use development to the end of August.

The tech industry has come together in recent months to support pro-housing initiatives, as the cost of living in the region makes it harder to recruit and retain tech workers.

In a letter to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, tech moguls including Salesforce's Marc Benioff and Yelp's Jeremy Stoppelman described the Brisbane Baylands project as a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" to make progress on the area's housing imbalance.

SEE ALSO: Take a look inside the former radioactive-waste site off the coast of San Francisco that's turning into a $5 billion housing development

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NOW WATCH: Inside the exclusive multimillion-dollar San Francisco street that a couple bought for $90,000

A new mansion has just hit the market in Beverly Hills.

At $80 million, it's one of the most expensive houses on the market in the US. With 28,000 square feet of space, it's also one of the largest.

The property is being sold by retail CEO  Albert Elkouby, a property developer who also owns an apparel company called JH Design. The house was previously listed two years ago for $72 million, but it failed to sell in its half-finished state.

Described as a "French Chateau" in the listing, Elkouby's home has every luxurious amenity and excess imaginable. 

Sam Real of Nest Seekers International has the listing.

SEE ALSO: 11 things every man should take out of his apartment and burn

The 1.5-acre property was landscaped to look like it belonged in the French countryside.

The entrance is grandiose and unflinching.

Inside, two marble staircases lead to the second floor of the two-story foyer.

The whole "flight attendants hate when you order Diet Coke" discussion has been blown way out of proportion.

If many of the headlines on the topic are to be believed, you must stop ordering Diet Coke on flights immediately, lest you incur the wrath of your flight attendant.

Please.

To be fair, many of these articles quote flight attendants who explain that Diet Coke takes longer to pour.

"Of all the drinks we serve, Diet Coke takes the most time to pour — the fizz takes forever to settle at 35,000 feet. In the time it takes me to pour a single cup of Diet Coke, I can serve three passengers a different beverage," Heather Poole, a flight attendant, wrote on her blog and was quoted in an INSIDER article saying.

"Pouring Diet Coke is one of the biggest slow downs in the bar service, and on the shorter flights those precious seconds count," another flight attendant quoted in similar articles who goes by the name Jet writes on his These Gold Wings blog.

But does it really make flight attendants' jobs so hard that you should quit the fizzy stuff entirely, or is this is all a bit of hyperbole? Before you reach for the regular soda, consider a few things:

1. Waiting longer isn't THAT big a deal

As Poole wrote on her blog, while it may be annoying to wait a little longer to pour someone's drink, flight attendants don't expect you to stop ordering Diet Coke. They certainly won't.

"For the record, I drink Diet Coke both as a flight attendant and as a passenger," Poole writes.

Jet similarly addressed this issue on his blog: "Here is my official stance on passengers ordering Diet Coke, not that anyone should actually care: I don't care what you want to drink. I'll pour it, and I wont have a second thought about it."

And when we asked a couple of flight attendants specifically if ordering Diet Coke mid-flight is all that bothersome, we heard much the same.

One flight attendant Business Insider talked to said he's never even heard of this phenomenon before.

And another flight attendant Business Insider talked to echoed much of Poole's sentiments:

"It takes a while to pour because of the fizz. It's just a few extra seconds, but when you're in the aisle trying to do a bunch of things it feels a lot longer. It happens with any of the diet sodas, I think. But Diet Coke is all I drink, so I can't get too annoyed."

2. There are ways to remediate the Diet Coke fizz

Jet offers an efficient method: Simply place a cup on top of an open can of soda, quickly flip the two over in unison, slowly lift the can straight up as the soda pours out of the can (keeping the soda level almost flush with the can), and add the ice last.

3. Flight attendants are very capable people

To say that ordering Diet Coke makes flight attendants' jobs much harder is pretty insulting when you think about it.

Ask any flight attendant and they'll tell you one of the biggest misconceptions about their job is that handing out drinks is their primary role. It isn't.

Their first job is to keep you alive and well, and doing this requires a great deal of training and hard work. The amount of training they receive on how to pour soda, on the other hand, is minimal to none.

4. There are a lot worse things you could do as a passenger

Flight attendants are privy to all kinds of terrible human behavior.

If you're going to adjust your flying habits, you'd be doing everyone a favor by keeping your feet in your shoes and off people's armrests, walls, headrests, ceiling control panels — you get the gist.

At the end of the day, if you're still concerned about holding things up for other passengers and your flight attendants, consider asking for the can and pouring your soda yourself. Your flight attendant will probably be happy to oblige.

As for never ordering Diet Coke on your next flight, we think you can let yourself off the hook on this one.

SEE ALSO: A flight attendant shares 3 things most people don't know about training school

DON'T MISS: Flight attendants share 25 things they wish passengers would stop doing — and one you can probably get away with

Join the conversation about this story »

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As a neurotic homeowner, the Canary smart home security system was probably one of the better things to happen to me. 

For $169, you get the Canary All-In-One (AIO). In addition to the device's headline camera function — which I use to spy on my dog while I'm at work — it also tells you about air quality and temperature of the room in which it sits. Recently, we got the Canary Flex, a $199 camera that can be mounted on a wall and powered from a built-in battery.

Now, Canary is getting even better with some long-awaited features that make me, personally, very happy: Two-way-talk, so I can use the Canary's built-in speakers to talk, a web app so I can watch the dog from my web browser, and, finally, a general performance increase so there's less lag when I'm watching Canary footage live. 

The caveat is that you need a Canary membership, normally priced at $10/month or $120/year, to take advantage of the intercom and web app features. That membership is pretty good, though, giving you access to more cloud video storage, a hotline of security specialists who you can call in the event of a break-in, and other perks. 

Anyway, I've tried the new features, and they're useful. Here's a video showing them in action:

You can read my original review of the Canary here, where I praised the gadget for its slick app, nondescript housing, and useful dashboard of information. 

Almost two years later, I would add two brief things to that original review.

First, the Canary Flex camera that I mentioned earlier is great. It's a pill-shaped camera that uses a magnet to stick onto its base, so you can rotate it a solid 360 degrees for the optimal fit. And it's proofed against most inclement weather. I have mine watching the outdoors, so I can see if and when UPS drops off a package. 

Second, and this part may not be as good for as many people, but — If you own a Canary, State Farm offers a small price break on your homeowners insurance, based on your Zip code and your policy. We didn't know that when we chose State Farm or Canary, so it was a very pleasant surprise.  

SEE ALSO: Home security camera startup Canary says its first year sales were 'bigger than Fitbit, GoPro, and Dropcam's first year combined'

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