Bridget

Not new-school, amazingly talented R&B-singing T-Pain either. No, I'm talking the T-Pain of yore—egregious amounts of auto-tune and all. This Team Fortress 2 player keeps the gag going, completely straight-faced, through an entire match, and it's glorious.

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Here's a short but intense Half-Life 2 fan-clip by animator Nathan Hibberd. His version of the game's annoying little enemy steals airboats, uses machine guns and acts like a crazy cartoon character.

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When a man with the last name "Cumming" is talking about sex, it's time to listen up.

Cabaret star Alan Cumming has released a troll-ific public service announcement to lambast the Food and Drug Administration's revamped blood donor policy for gay and bisexual men, which only allows donations from men who have abstained from sex for an entire year. The 12-month mandate is due to the fact that "compelling scientific evidence is not available at this time to support a change to a deferral period less than one year while still ensuring the safety of the blood supply," according to an FDA statement to the New York Times. It's an unrealistic expectation that's not placed on any other minority group and contributes to a nationwide blood shortage by barring (nearly) all men who have sex with men from donating blood.

Enter Cumming. His tongue-in-cheek campaign, the "Celibacy Challenge," dares dudes to not have sex for a year. Read More

Talented Russian nature photographer Vadim Trunov has had close encounters with squirrels before, but this is the first time we’ve seen his photos of squirrels playing or shooting photos of each other! The photographer recently published some photos he’s captured of squirrels that seem to be building snowmen or playing volleyball with nuts.

Thousands of People Are Watching This Guy Code a Search Engine

There are now endless ways to approach beatmaking and electronic music as well as a seemingly never-ending supply of people churning out club bangers or dubstep grime—and a lot of it sounds the same. But the oversaturation of electronic musicians means that, if you're willing to do some digging, you can uncover some pretty thoughtful stuff like this track, "My Own Blood," originally by Blacksmif and remixed by DJ Earl.

Blacksmif's work tends to genre-bend even more than that of his contemporaries, introducing elements of jazz, dub, and soul into his strange electronic landscape. This track is atmospheric and upbeat, but also tasteful. Something about London lends itself to these catchy beats. Maybe it's the weather.

There's something distinctive about how an attractive man carries himself among his peers — let's call it the "I'm hot, you're not" attitude. Read More

Apparently somebody went to see The Boy Next Door, because a bunch of people are trying to find that "first edition copy of the Iliad ," a three-thousand-year-old work derived from oral tradition.

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Fuck it list

Be sure to check out our constantly updated concert calendar! Friday, February 20 The Ninth Annual Dre Day DRAGONFLY Kanye might have started a genre battle by pitting the “artistry” of hip-hop against that of rock, but for many, lines need not be drawn. For nine years, the talents of...

Forget the middle school haters who shamed you into believing you were tone-deaf. A new study reveals that singing is more like playing an instrument than previously thought: Singing accurately is a skill that can be taught and developed. And that means that even the worst singers among us should just keep singing.

"No one expects a beginner on violin to sound good right away; it takes practice, but everyone is supposed to be able to sing," Steven Demorest, the lead researcher behind the study, told Northwestern University. "When people are unsuccessful, they take it very personally. But we think if you sing more, you'll get better."

Source: Getty ImagesThe study: Using three age groups — kindergarteners, sixth graders and college-aged adults — researchers asked each person to listen to a pitch and then sing it back. Read More

Joseph Gordon-Levitt just landed himself some cozy new digs in the Franklin Hills neighborhood. [ more › ]

Erik Söderberg “Fractal Experience”

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The author, looking objectifiable

I do not love men. Really, I love the idea of men. And the attention thereof. It is nice to be wanted, needed, desired; these are confidence boosters only men can give me. While I am certainly not immune to the charms of the fairer sex, women lack the ego-salving, life-giving validation I feel only the male gaze can provide. (This is, presumably, the result of decades of heteronormative programming pushed on me by television, a.k.a. my real mommy.) As such, my lizard brain does not hold gals in such high regard as their chromosome-deficient counterparts.

I go out of my way to attract masculine attention—even when it's stupid, even when it's pointless, even when they're taken, even when they're terrible. The circumstances surrounding and the reason for their attention mean nothing. Attention is all I seek, so long as it's from a semi-reliable source. While some random, mouth-breathing asshole on the street who calls me "baby" elicits my ire, if a man I respect (or at the very least, tolerate in the slightest) shows even the suggestion of an interest in me, I run to him like a dog to its master. I see Pavlov's dong and start drooling.

When you are a woman, you are told through miscellaneous channels that sex is one of the precious few powers you possess. You are told this by people who have your self-interest at heart; you are also told this by people who do not. When I found myself in an abusive relationship, it was because the man I was with resented the fact I had cheated on and, as a result, used my sexual power against him—this act, a striking blow to his manhood, was, in his mind, unforgivable. He lashed out in the only way he knew how, by exerting his masculinity through physical abuse (that's what he told me, anyway). At the time, the logic he used to explain his actions made sense. While I no longer blame myself entirely for what occurred, his reasoning does, to some extent, nevertheless ring a bit true. We all do what we have been programmed to—and while it's always theoretically possible to download the latest, bug-free update of our software, some don't or can't.

I didn't wear makeup during my formative years—my mother never taught me how to apply it, ostensibly because I never asked her to. Makeup, I felt, was for vacuous cheerleaders and future mothers. It wasn't for me. Sure, I'd occasionally smear red lipstick on my practiced pout, but that was only because Courtney Love did it. On a daily basis, I operated au naturel.

Thirty pounds heavier and with my own feminist-inspired agenda to prove, I put myself out there, warts and all. It turned out, however, the public at large was not particularly interested in my warts. Department store employees would ignore me; the good, decent people of the world refused to look my way, lest they catch a glimpse at what untreated acne really looked like. Once I caught the acting bug and started dabbling in makeup, I gained my license for humanity. I became a person, a woman, deserving of attention. I now wear makeup on a daily basis. I am, in fact, wearing it right now, in spite of the fact I have not, nor do I intend to, leave my apartment today. It has become rote.

I remember the day I first manicured my enormous, unwieldy eyebrows. I had hired another woman to do it, a professional, because I wasn't confident enough to perform the task myself. "Honey, is this your first time doing this?" she sweetly asked. I answered in the affirmative. "Well, good for you," she told me in a Southern slur before engaging in the laborious process of whittling my caterpillar-esque brows into a thin, appealing arch. Before the act, I resembled a Rid of Me–era PJ Harvey. Afterward, I resembled an Is This Desire?–era PJ Harvey.

I returned to my house and, situating myself like a statue on a pedestal, anxiously awaited my then boyfriend. He had been making derisive comments about my appearance of late; I hoped this improvement in said appearance would make him want me, love me, stop judging me. It took hours before he offhandedly asked, "Did you do something different?"

This was not a mere haircut. This was a deliberate, drastic change of my facial makeup. I have Mediterranean blood—my biological eyebrows are dark, rich, and inescapable. The hatchet job that had been done to them (which I still maintain to this day) was as obvious as rhinoplasty. The changes I made, I decided, weren't drastic enough. I needed to go back to the drawing board.

I became an anorexic for the reason most women do, because I felt it was the only semblance of control I could exert in my life. I just wanted the world to see, externally, how unhappy I was internally. Any reinforcement of this was a victory. I remember when my ex and I evacuated New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina. We picked up our debit cards full of Red Cross relief funds in Bloomington, Minnesota, and instantly drove to the Mall of America, where he purchased a Slayer shirt and I purchased size 00 slacks. Two zeroes! Why, that was the absence of size! Unfurl the banner, my mission had been accomplished—at size 00, I may as well not exist.

My next conquest's grandmother, upon meeting me, remarked, "There's not much of her, is there?" I took this as a compliment. Said conquest (my ex-husband) would consistently tell me he was afraid that, when we fucked, he'd split me in two. Again, I took this as a compliment.

The boyfriend afterward loved me for me, sure, but I always felt as though he could have loved better. When we first coupled, I was still anorexic—as time went on, I filled out, looking more like a human being than I had in years. But it is difficult, as a woman, to gain 20 pounds and still feel as though you deserve the right to vote. I'd look at pictures of myself on miscellaneous social media platforms with disgust, listening when he said I was still beautiful yet refusing to believe it. He, unlike the gents I had become accustomed to over the years, was not a complete and utter piece of shit. I found his support for me, in my uncompromised form, nearly impossible to accept.

We broke up; I lost weight. People told me I looked great, better than ever. "Thank you," I'd always reply. "I've been grieving." It was ironic, the fact that I had become more desirable—in my assessment, anyhow—once I was completely alone. Adding to my confusion, the one fellow I fancied, the only one I did a modicum of anything romantic with post-breakup, respected me enough to treat me like a person. Sure, we'd make out while The Gong Show played in the background, but he didn't even try to fuck me. Hell, it took him a few times before he even mustered up the chutzpah to touch my tits! What kind of a pussy doesn't take it upon himself to make a woman uncomfortable? I thought.

In spite of it all, I still don't feel comfortable around men unless I'm being made to feel uncomfortable. Old habits, of course, die hard. I'm just waiting for the new operating system to come out.

Follow Megan Koester on Twitter.

The cover of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures is famously graced with the radio pulses of a dying star. Its origins, however, have always been unclear. But now, Scientific American's Jen Christiansen has followed the rabbit hole to the very end—to an obscure 1970 PhD astronomy thesis and the guy who wrote it.

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It's raining down ash in Southern California, after an Exxon Mobil oil refinery exploded. The blast nearly leveled a processing unit and left four contractors with minor injuries. The local Torrance Fire Department says gasoline is to blame. Meanwhile, the aftermath looks like a scene from Blade Runner .

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Every subway car has one: the wary rider who leans on the door or assumes a wide stance to avoid direct contact with any subway surfaces. In one sense, who can blame them? Upon first (or 5,000th) glance, the New York City subway might seem like the perfect place to contract an infection — especially in the winter, when single-digit temperatures drive sniffling pedestrians underground and a healthy coating of sludge covers train floors. 

Thanks to researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College, who swabbed subway surfaces and published their findings, we know that visible grime is only the half of it: Microscopic pathogens, like anthrax and bubonic plague, live on turnstiles and subway benches across the five boroughs.

Still, even in its least savory state, the subway isn't much of a health hazard. Read More

I tried to warn everybody: Dying Light can be a really, really hard game. If you still don't believe me, witness one player wailing on a zombie for a solid minute and a half and the fucker still won't go down. Remember to repair your weapons, people!

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Space

The new moon that will grace our skies on Wednesday evening (or Thursday morning, depending on where you are in the world) appears to have employed some advanced publicity agents: It has been dubbed both a black moon and a supermoon.

breakingbadfriends:

Better Call Rick

Health goth is dead because fucking real goth is back, my cool little vampiras. All you fools in your little weenie Nike Free Runs, jogging tights and HBA jammies prepare to fall back because Real Goth is in town this fashion week and is set to destroy your downtown trustafarian personae with glares and severe face veils. Even your patron saint Alex Wang can sense it in the air. Good thing you're wearing those sneakers, cause you're gonna need them to run away from the brooding hordes.

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Plants and Animals

People living in East Asia have inherited about 20 percent more Neanderthal DNA than Europeans. Some say that’s because the Neanderthal lineage was diluted in Europeans because they bred more with Africans, who lack Neanderthal ancestry for the most part. Well, not so, according to two studies published in the American Journal of Human Genetics. The differences were due to multiple occasions where Neanderthals and early East Asians mixed. 

iamthegarebear:

witchbat:

nerd

Look how dramatically the other mantis falls.

grinderman2:

frogman44435:

this is my bf (Bathtub Frog)

The Cuddle Clones toy company makes custom plush-toy replicas of pets from photos sent in by their clients.

The company’s founder, Jennifer Graham, came up with the idea for custom plushies when hanging out with her Great Dane, Rufus. When he passed away in 2009, she finally created a stuffed-animal replica, and now other users have also started memorializing their pets with Cuddle Clones. Of course, two heads are better than one – you can get a plushie if your pet is perfectly healthy as well!

More info: cuddleclones.com | Facebook | Instagram (h/t: dailymail)

wetheurban:

SPOTLIGHT: Light Sculptures by James Turrell

An exploration into American artist James Turrell's jaw-dropping installations. Oh, the things we'd do to experience one of these IRL. Through the genius controlled use of light and space, Turrell can create masterful brain tricks and illusions of walls and barriers where none exist. 

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Future house goals.

Beckett Quotes on Photos of Boston’s Snow, MB(ecket)TA