Set aside your cat-person and dog-person mentalities to discover the truth.

sliceofnice.com

After powering the world's most retweeted tweet, Samsung has also revealed a suite of app-based upgrades that future GS5 owners will receive, free, alongside their new smartphone. While Evernote and Linkedin's premium services only extend to three...

This guy should just soundtrack everything.

Divergent, the epic movie based on the epic young adult book series, will be released on March 21.

Summit Entertainment

An impressive faction of new artists got together to soundtrack the movie's brutal near future. There's even a Kendrick Lamar and Tame Impala collaboration.

Lamar and the Australian band linked to record a new version of 2012 jam "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards." Ellie Goulding turns up a couple times, A$AP Rocky teams up with muscly French producer Gessafelstein, and there's more new stuff from Zedd and Chance The Rapper.

“I Need You,” the soundtrack contribution from master-of-intense-emotions M83, is debuting today on BuzzFeed.

It sounds kind of like if Bon Iver strapped into an armored robot suit, then saved the world while the sun rose:

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It’s time to hop on a plane.

davidrumsey.com

One of the busiest online electronics stores in the US is about to open for business in Europe, including the UK. Newegg expects to start trading at the end of March, although we're told it'll be a relatively soft launch until the company feels more...

Because we all know Thin Mints are the best Girl Scout cookie. You’re welcome.

Frozen Thin Mints

Thin Mints frozen are its truest form.

easilypleased.blogspot.com.au

Chocolate Chip Thin Mint Cookies

The cookie inside the cookie.
Recipe here.

sweetpeaskitchen.com

Thin Mint Brownies

Recipe here.

travelingspoonblog.blogspot.com

Thin Mint Cookie Dough Truffles

Recipe here.

somethingswanky.com

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Watch the sun rise at least once a day.

Lower your expectations.

ABC / Via charmandur.tumblr.com

ABC

ABC

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He’s even more lovable than we thought!

You might not expect to see Seth Rogen speaking on the allocation of funds for Alzheimer's research, but his mother-in-law has the disease, so the cause is deeply personal to him.

youtube.com

"Thank you very much for having me...and for the opportunity for me to be called an expert in something, because that's cool."

"I don't know if you know who I am at all. You told me you never saw Knocked Up, Chairman, so...that's a little insulting."

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Tucker Carlson became one of the few Fox News hosts to come out in favor of Arizona’s religious freedom legislation that would allow businesses and individuals refuse services to LGBT people.

TUCKER CARLSON: "Well, it's pretty simple. I mean, if you want to have a gay wedding, fine, go ahead. If I don't want to bake you a cake for your gay wedding, that's okay, too. Or should be. That's called tolerance. But when you try and force me to bake a cake for your gay wedding and threaten me with prison if I don't, that's called fascism."

LINK: Watch the full clip

“You can tell a lot about a person from his biography.” — Phil Dunphy

Comedy Central’s Broad City features two best friends, Abbi and Ilana, who have the kind of best friendship you’ve always wanted.

Abbi and Ilana on Broad City are having the BEST time being best friends with each other.

crushable.com

They'll play it cool whenever one of them is embarrassing herself in front of a cute guy.

giphy.com

They're totally obsessed with each other, and only sometimes in a creepy way.

comedycentral.tumblr.com

Their Skype game is dedicated and on-point.

No amount of vomiting can get in the way.

tv.com

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“Why didn’t anyone tell me that religions with GROSS BOATS and SWORDS were a viable option??” Preach, Dinosaur Comics .

More theological raptors at Dinosaur Comics.

qwantz.com

discovery.com

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The answer was in front of us all along.

Reddit user jWiessing posted a shocking theory about E.T. involving everyone's favorite Jedi master.

This theory popped up on Reddit and links to an Imgur page. It's not entirely clear who created the theory. What is clear is that it's amazing.

Universal Home Video / Via gifake.net

First of all, as everyone remembers, Yoda is a well known figure in the Senate Chamber.

Disney / Via forums.wdwmagic.com

Since E.T. creatures exist in Star Wars (they can be seen clearly in the Senate Chamber in Episode II), it's reasonable to assume they know Yoda.

Disney / Via starwars.wikia.com

In E.T., one of them comes to Earth and meets a young boy, Elliot.

Universal Home Video

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Aurora over New Zealand
Sometimes the more you look at an image, the more you see. Such may be the case for this beautiful nighttime panorama taken last week in New Zealand. Visible right off, on the far left, are common clouds, slightly altered by the digital fusion of combining 11 separate 20-second exposures. More striking, perhaps, is the broad pink aurora that dominates the right part of the image, a less common auroral color that is likely tinted by excited oxygen atoms high in Earth's atmosphere. Keep looking and you might notice a bright light just beyond the mountain on the left. That is the rising Moon -- and an even closer look will reveal faint crepuscular rays emanating from it. Musing over the image center may cause you to notice the central band of the Milky Way Galaxy which here appears to divide, almost vertically, the left clouds from the right aurora. Inspecting the upper right of the image reveals a fuzzy patch, high in the sky, that is the Small Magellanic Cloud. Numerous stars discretely populate the distant background. Back on Earth, the image foreground features two domes of the Mt. John University Observatory and a camera tripod looking to capture much of this scene over a serene Lake Tekapo.

Tomorrow's picture: open space

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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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& Michigan Tech. U.

Who would’ve guessed that New Jersey loves Bruce Springsteen?

After studying the preferences of a quarter million listeners, Paul Lamere determined which artists were favored the most in each state above all others. What this says about your state is up to you to decide.

Lamere aggregated the data across a wide range of music services powered by The Echo Nest, where he is the director of developer platform. He originally posted this map to his Music Machinery blog.

musicmachinery.com

Here's the map in list form:

musicmachinery.com

[link] [36 comments]

When it came to light that New Yorkers’ hallowed tradition of weekend drunching is actually against the law, they took to the internet to vent their outrage.

On February 25th, Eater published a short but very important post, pointing to the illegality of New Yorkers' beloved "Bottomless Brunches."

Via instagram.com

Specifically, the law prohibits "selling, serving, delivering or offering to patrons an unlimited number of drinks during any set period of time for a fixed price."

Read more on the NYC Hospitality Alliance website here.

Via instagram.com

For many New Yorkers, whose weekends and social lives hinge around the $20 "all you can drink for two hours" deals offered ubiquitously, this is devastating.

statigr.am

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Three countries with so much in common that can’t agree on anything.

Chip flavors:

lays.ca / fritolay.com / walkers.co.uk

What we do with our fries:

en.wikipedia.org / bubblews.com / localnomad.com

What we put on toast:

dorindaduclos.com / sonicdrivein.com / en.wikipedia.org

How we handle ourselves when we've been drinking:

reddit.com

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CHICAGO—Upon spotting the blue carabiner connecting his keys to his pants’ belt loop, coworkers of local software engineer Peter Slotnick speculated Tuesday that the 34-year-old man must rappel into their office building every morning.

Today, I found out that the little arrow next to my gas gauge actually points to the side of the car where the tank is. For the past year-and-a-half I've been sticking my head out the window and even calling my parents to ask which side it was on, because I can never remember. FML

What do you do when one of your cities is beneath the ocean? Turn it into a tourist attraction, of course.

The ancient city of Shi Cheng was also known as the Lion City because it was located in the province of Zhejiang, where it was surrounded by the five Lion Mountains.

CEN / Via europics.at

A dam was built to create a man-made lake, and as the water rose, the city was left at the bottom of this new found body of water.

CEN / Via europics.at

Founded over 1,300 years ago, it vanished from view 53 years ago when the Chinese government decided they needed a new hydroelectric power station.

CEN / Via europics.at

Depending on where on the lake bottom it is, the city is between 85 and 131 feet underwater.

CEN / Via europics.at

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The best moments have little to do with winning.

When Olympic volunteers skied down the half pipe in a heart-shape formation in honor of Sarah Burke, a pioneer of women's freestyle, who died during training in 2012.

Getty / Mike Ehrmann

When sisters Chloe and Justine Dufour-Lapointe won gold and silver respectively and took the medal stand hand-in-hand.

Dylan Martinez / Reuters

When gold-medalist Dario Cologna waited 28 minutes after crossing the finish line in men's cross-country to shake hands with Roberto Carcelen, who finished last.

Getty / Paul Gilham

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It’s baaaaaack — in the sequel Vivica A. Fox and Mark McGrath are also going to be kicking some shark butt.

Sharknado 2 is currently filming in New York City. Ian Ziering is back...

PacificCoastNews

...with Mark McGrath...

PacificCoastNews

And Vivica A. Fox!

PacificCoastNews

From the looks of things, the movie will feature a shark attack in New York City,

Darla Khazei, PacificCoastNews

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Joshua Hoffine shoots these pictures using his own children.

On his website, Joshua writes: "I am interested in the psychology of fear."

Joshua Hoffine / Via joshuahoffine.com

"Horror, as an art form, draws its strength from the unconscious."

Joshua Hoffine / Via joshuahoffine.com

"We are all born with certain inherent and instinctual fears, such as fear of the dark, the fear of lurking danger, and the fear of being eaten. As we grow older these fears lose their intensity and are slowly shuffled away into our unconscious."

Joshua Hoffine / Via joshuahoffine.com

"I use friends and family members, including my own daughters, as actors and crew."

Joshua Hoffine / Via joshuahoffine.com

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There’s a first time for everything! Which is actually pretty much EVERYTHING for babies.

youtube.com

Wait, ice cream is cold?!

youtube.com

Rocket Golf

Assuming that you have a spaceship in orbit around the Earth, could you propel your ship to speeds exceeding escape velocity by hitting golf balls in the other direction? If so, how many golf balls would be required to reach the Moon?

—Dan (Kanata, Ontario)

It depends how good your swing is.

That sounds glib, but it's sort of true. The answer to this question hinges on exactly how fast you can hit a golf ball.

Sometimes, exact numbers don't matter that much. If my baseball, car, dog, or Zamboni goes a little faster than yours,[1]$20 says they will! it will go a little farther. But that's not how it works in rocket golf. The design of our spaceship turns out to involve an equation where the speed of the golf ball is in the exponent. That means a small change in speed can make a big difference.

The equation in question—which might be my favorite in all of physics—the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation:

\[ \Delta v = v_\text{exhaust} \ln \frac{m_\text{initial}}{m_\text{final}} \]

This equation comes up a lot in What If calculations. I like it both because it says something fundamental about our ability to explore the universe, and because you can use it to get really good at Kerbal Space Program.

With some rearranging, the equation can help us figure out how much of our ship's weight has to be golf balls:

\[ \frac{\text{Mass of ship plus golf balls}}{\text{Mass of ship alone}} = e ^ \left ( \frac{\text{Ship's change in speed}}{\text{Speed of golf ball}} \right ) \]

Someone who, like me, has never been golfing before, might—after swinging and missing a few times—manage to hit the ball at 120 mph (50 m/s).[2]See Trackman's page on ball speed To get to the Moon from low Earth orbit, you would need enough fuel to add 5,300 m/s to your ship's speed. By putting those numbers into the rocket equation, we can find out how large a sack of golf balls would have to be for the average golfer to reach the Moon. If we plug it in to Wolfram|Alpha ...

... we find that the bag of golf balls will have to be just about exactly 100 billion miles in diameter. That's much, much bigger than our Solar System.[3]As a Fermi rule of thumb, planets in the inner Solar System are 100 million kilometers away and planets in the outer Solar System are a billion kilometers away. Or miles; either one works.

It would also promptly and violently collapse into a black hole.

Fortunately, we should be able to avert that disaster by making relatively small changes to the "120" in that equation. If we increase the golf ball's speed from 120 mph to 150, it shrinks the answer dramatically, and the required number of golf balls would fit snugly between the Sun and Mars. Still too big to avoid a catastrophic collapse, but we're getting somewhere.

Tiger Woods can hit a golf ball at about 180 mph, which means that if he were powering our spaceship, the bag of golf balls would be only twice the diameter of the Sun!

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the record for fastest golf drive is 211 mph, set by Maurice Allen in 2012. This corresponds to a bag of golf balls only 100,000 kilometers across—smaller than Jupiter, but still (obviously) not practical.

However, golfer Ryan Winther claims to have beaten this record, though without Guinness observers there.[4]And, obviously, it doesn't count unless it's overseen by people from a beer company. If you want to set a world record, hit a golf ball at a radar gun and get it certified by the Mike's Hard Lemonade people. His ball speed was measured by something called the "Titleist Performance Institute" to be 226.7 mph, and he claims a personal best of 237 mph. If he could consistently hit 237 mph, we could shrink our fuel container down to the size of Earth[5]Although it would still be large enough to partially collapse under its own gravity, similar to what happened to the mole of moles.

This still wouldn't work; even in a high orbit, the massive tides from your ship—which is much more massive than the Moon—would be highly disruptive.

We could probably shrink the fuel tank further by using "illegal" equipment. There are Superball-style balls and "trampoline face" clubs which can hit much farther, and which would not be permitted in tournament play.[6]On the other hand, we're talking about a sport that brought whites-only clubs with it into the 21st century, and Agusta, host of the Masters, admitted its first woman in 2012. So maybe we shouldn't worry too much about their traditional rules. A hypothetical 270 mph drive would allow a fuel tank the size of the Moon.

At this point, why are we even using a club?

According to research from the US Air Force Academy and BTG Research,[7]Oddly, both researchers have the name "Courtney". There are probably about 200,000 people in the US named Courtney (first or last); maybe we should recruit them to all build potato cannons. a potato cannon fueled by acetylene can launch a potato at 140 m/s (310 mph). If it were capable of launching golf balls at that speed,[8]We're not factoring in the weight of the acetylene—but then again, we also weren't factoring in the weight of the hamburgers the golfer would need to eat to keep hitting those drives. our ship would have a diameter of only 150 miles!

There's the small problem that manufacturing that many golf balls would cost quintillions of dollars. You could bring the size down further by making the potato cannon more and more powerful and efficient, but at that point you're simply building a rocket.

And the potato cannon scenario has an extra perk. If you somehow made the balls durable enough to survive atmospheric entry, and you set up your maneuver so the ejected golf balls covered the middle latitudes evenly, then over the course of this maneuver you would be statistically likely to hit a hole-in-one ... at every golf course in the world.

“…hope that he received total consciousness.”

Hollywood.com

sfgate.com

Statement from the president on the passing of Harold Ramis:

Michelle and I were saddened to hear of the passing of Harold Ramis, one of America's greatest satirists, and like so many other comedic geniuses, a proud product of Chicago's Second City. When we watched his movies—from Animal House and Caddyshack to Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day—we didn't just laugh until it hurt. We questioned authority. We identified with the outsider. We rooted for the underdog. And through it all, we never lost our faith in happy endings. Our thoughts and prayers are with Harold's wife, Erica, his children and grandchildren, and all those who loved him, who quote his work with abandon, and who hope that he received total consciousness.

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And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how it’s done.

youtube.com

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Whale hello there!

According to Youtuber Jordyn R., this close encounter happened off the coast of Baja. Everyone is fine.

youtube.com

Watch it in slow-mo!

youtube.com

That's...unpleasant.

By Japanese game console launch standards, the PlayStation 4 is off to a great start. In the first 48 hours of availability, Japanese console buyers snapped up just under 350,000 PlayStation 4 systems (322,083 to be exact, according to Famitsu)....