Christopher Lantz

artwork by Nicole Gustafsson

Imaginary Friends is an upcoming group art show at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, California featuring artwork that celebrates the fun and fantastical friendship of our childhood. The show will open on Saturday, April 19th, 2014 and be on display until May 11th. In conjunction with the show, Gallery Nucleus will also be celebrating the release of artist and writer Dan Santat‘s new book, The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend.

Here is a list of the featured artists:

Adam Rex, Ako Castuera, Alina Chau, Anna Chambers, Anne Benjamin, Calef Brown, Camille Andre, Corinne Reid, Cuddly Rigor Mortis, Dan Santat, Daniel Brassette Daniella Volpari, Dave Roman, Genevieve Godbout, Israel Sanchez Jaime Zollars, Jake Parker Joy Ang, Matthew Cordell, Maxime Mary, Nate Wragg, Nicole Gustafsson, Pascal Campion, Seb Mesnard, Tuna Bora, Yohan Sacre, and more.

The Adventures of Beekle by Dan Santat

artwork by Zachariah OHora

artwork by Dan Santat

artwork by Alina Chau

images via Gallery Nucleus and credited artists

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

The best thing about the Screen Junkies’ Honest Trailers are that the crew behind them actually like the movies they’re parodying. Their latest endeavor, The Wolf of Wall Street, shows plenty of reverence for director Martin Scorsese‘s hilarious yet disturbing story of excess. It points out much of what’s great about the movie while also poking fun at its pop culture relevance. It highlights co-star Matthew McConaughey beating Leonardo DiCaprio for the Oscar, the debut of Jonah Hill‘s penis, Scorsese’s love of DiCaprio, and how some audiences totally missed the point of the movie. It’s a super funny video. Watch The Wolf of Wall Street Honest Trailer below.

Thanks to Screen Junkies for the The Wolf of Wall Street Honest Trailer. Also, one of the best jokes is towards the end (regarding DiCaprio’s Oscar snub) so watch all the way through.

Wolf of Wall Street Honest Trailer

• ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ Featurettes and Interviews Explore Scorsese’s Latest
• ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ Examined in 25-Minute Talk With Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jonah Hill
• Party With New Posters For ‘The Wolf of Wall Street;’ Plus New 10 Images and a Clip
• ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ Trailer: Becoming a Legend
• Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ Unlikely to Make 2013 Release
• ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ Trailer: Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Kanye West

The post LOL: ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ Honest Trailer appeared first on /Film.

Directed by local producer Hussam Maatouk and shot by San Diego photographer Michael Shainblum, “Welcome to Doha” is a time-lapse exploration of Doha, Qatar’s capital and largest city. The video crams a lot of different views of Doha into four minutes, featuring construction, factories and breathtaking shots of its downtown area, showing the rapid growth of Qatar’s economic center.

via Fstoppers, PetaPixel

For those who were unable to view the “blood moon” lunar eclipse on April 14, 2014 due to global positioning, weather or timing, TIME has condensed the whole event into a nine-second animated GIF. Of particular note is the brief reddish hue caused by light refracted by the Earth’s atmosphere.

via TIME

demontadark:

horrorpunk:

Accurate. 

Very.

kittwalker:

Sailor Moon cosplay for tiny dogs.

“So, we are just looking for something memorable.”

CollegeHumor has created a video exploring the many reasons why Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin shouldn’t plan your wedding, or really any wedding for that matter.

An illustration of the subtle differences between American vs. British English by webcomic artist David Namisato.

via http://plasticparallel.tumblr.com/post/59411928404/roevy?og=1&fb_action_ids=10151609013073683%2C10151608167313683%2C10151608158593683%2C10151606368123683%2C10151603715303683&fb_action_types=tumblr-feed%3Areblog&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%7B%2210151609013073683%22%3A1381871052042284%2C%2210151608167313683%22%3A504329666311659%2C%2210151608158593683%22%3A507722995978898%2C%2210151606368123683%22%3A397921480309766%2C%2210151603715303683%22%3A1410634582484850%2C%2210151603697763683%22%3A500991049984856%7D

Don’t get hacked, make safe dating profiles and fight back at online harassment: learn how in my new book The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy. Find out more on the book’s Smart Privacy Tumblr.

• Vanessa Omoregie’s camgirlsproject project pairs famous paintings of nude muses – Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (1486), Amedeo Modigliani’s Nudo Sdraiato (1917) and Guerin Pierre Narcisse’s Morpheus and Iris (1811) — with overlaid crops of camgirl-style self-portraits.
  Classic Nude Paintings Remixed With Consenting Camgirls (Animal New York)

• IMO, this is a serious threat to free expression. The Web as we know it is being replaced, slowly but surely, by mobile apps. Access to those apps is controlled by just two companies: Apple and Google. There are now more people using mobile devices than are using desktop browsers. Do you have an app for your adult site? Not for Apple/IOS devices, you don’t, because Steve Jobs hated porn so badly that Apple still bans anything vaguely sexy from its app store. You probably don’t have an Android app for your adult site, either; Google’s app store has always banned explicit content, and recently tightened the rules to exclude “erotic” content as well.
  Where Your Adult Site Visitors Went (Eros Blog)

• At least six female characters on Game Of Thrones have been played by current or former porn stars.
  Meet the 6 porn stars of ‘Game of Thrones’ (New York Post)

• The Federal Trade Commission’s move this week to formally charge the operators of Jerk.com with alleged deceptive trade practices involving improperly obtained profiles signals the beginning of a new focus for the agency. The FTC said in a federal complaint that Jerk.com misled users when it claimed the content on the site had been created by users. In fact, regulators said, most of the site’s content was harvested from Facebook.
  FTC Complaint Signals Caution for Dating Sites (XBIZ)

Veiviev’s New Awesome Oculus Porn Demo from VRSexLab.com on Vimeo.

• Don’t miss this fascinating exploration on Oculus Rift tech and gender, where danah boyd begins with the accusation that it’s a sexist creation and attempts to solve the question as to why women are more prone to be sick in simulators than men.
  Is the Oculus Rift sexist? (Quartz)

• ABC News’ Nightline will be airing a segment “The Effects of Piracy on Adult Entertainment” tonight at 12:35 a.m. EST. The piece focuses primarily on Tasha Reign, but also includes interviews with Takedown Piracy owner Nate Glass, Wicked Pictures contract performer and director Jessica Drake and many more from the mainstream porn industry.
  ABC’s Nightline to Air Segment on Porn Piracy Tonight (XBIZ)

• Age gaps and sexual relationships – a very interesting Savage Love.
  Paying for sex as geezerdom looms (Chicago Reader)

• “The lesbians I know have largely turned their backs on girl-on-girl action, seeking instead to scratch that most personal of itches with just about anything else.”
  Straight Porn Is Full of “Lesbians.” So Why Is Lesbian Porn So Uninspiring? (Slate)

• Provided you’re not “lucky” enough to catch them live, YouTube and Reddit are the new homes for clips of people doin’ it live on their PlayStation 4.
  Hey Sony, People Are Having Sex Live On The PS4 (Kotaku)

• Ever feel like you just don’t have the energy for sex during the work week? Between exhausting jobs, kids and other duties, it’s hard to fit enough time in the day. But it’s not impossible to maintain a good sex life.
  How To Maintain Your Sex Life During The Work Week (LifeHacker AU)

• The 2014 Feminist Porn Conference was presented by The Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto April 5 and 6. It was the culminating event in a week of diverse happenings that included a special film screening of the past year’s best films, a storytelling event, a fisting workshop, a new film festival, and the ninth annual Feminist Porn Awards (2014 winners are here). More than 300 people attended the second annual conference.
  2014 Feminist Porn Conference Reports Spike in Attendance (XBIZ)

• In a lawsuit by revenge porn victims over the controversial revenge porn website Texxxan.com, a Texas state trial court had ruled that Texxxan’s web host, GoDaddy, was liable for hosting the site. Today, a Texas appellate court fixed the lower court’s obvious legal error and emphatically ruled that GoDaddy qualifies for Section 230′s protection. While this is good news for the judicial system’s accuracy, it’s hardly the last word on revenge porn legal questions.
  Revenge Porn Is Bad, But It’s Not GoDaddy’s Fault (Forbes)

• It was only a matter of time. If you’ve never heard of bubbling, the ingenious invention of a young, lonely Mormon man that lets your mind turn innocent bikini shots into porn, now’s your chance to get acquainted.
  The Bubble Porn Video: No Nudity, But Extremely NSFW (Gizmodo)

• Despite the daunting challenge of collecting information and artifacts surrounding one of the most unspoken parts of our culture, Vienna’s Museum of Contraception and Abortion has managed to gather an impressive collection of contraceptive curios.
  The Museum of Contraception and Abortion (Atlas Obscura, via Viviane’s Twitter)

• Mississippi’s sex-ed curriculum is not notable for its progressive nature. But one thing you can’t say about the Magnolia State is that it follows the advice of some conservative parents who want schools to totally ignore homosexuality. In fact, state law mandates that the subject be discussed, at least briefly: Students are to be told that homosexual activity is illegal.
  Mississippi’s Sex-Ed Classes Teach Kids That Homosexuality Is Illegal, Even Though It Isn’t (New Republic)

• Sex with robots may currently be restricted to fiction, but with advances in technology this could eventually change. Despite how some may react, this is something that should be accepted, maybe even embraced.
  Robots and sex: creepy or cool? (Guardian UK)

• Copyright trolls X-Art had already gone too far, but this is insane: the introduction of polygraph tests by Keith Lipscomb’s shakedown enterprise as an instrument of coercion is repulsive.
  Due to lack of evidence, copyright trolls resort to polygraph tests (Fight Copyright Trolls)

If you’re a fan of Daft Punk and Homestar Runner, check out this oddly satisfying, full-length mashup of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories (2013) and Strong Bad’s timeless classic “Everybody To The Limit (Come On Fhqwhgads).”

Gofor is a fascinating drones on-demand service concept by designer Alex Cornell and actor Phil Mills. The concept posits a world where users can rent quadcopters via app for tasks like taking pictures or scouting out parking locations.

image via Gofor

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Chuck Testa would definitely not approve of these terrible taxidermy jobs.

Gralbum is an iPad app that lets musicians add interactive storytelling elements to their records, launched by former Lou Reed collaborator, Sarth Calhoun. The project’s name is a conflation of the words “graphic novel” and “album,” with the app bringing multimedia elements like video, images animation and comics to the the musical experience.

A combination of animated graphic novel, art book, and music album, Gralbums enable musicians to meld their music with artwork and deliver an interactive experience on touch devices. They are a new creative medium for collaboration, multimedia art and immersive storytelling.

There are already some examples of the technology up on the Gralbum website. You can also follow the collective on Facebook and Twitter.

Documentary filmmaker and father Sean Phillips recorded clips of his baby boy Jonah making cute noises and pieced them all together to make it sound as if he was beatboxing like a pro.

Babies are cute. Babies that beatbox are just plain AWESOME. Meet the talented Jonah!

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Shot between February and March 2014, ‘Eye of the Storm’ is a short, wordless document of Iceland’s winter landscape. Set to an instrumental soundtrack by composer/cellist Shaun Diaz, Henry Juh Wah Lee’s film captures ice-covered terrain, time-lapsed footage of snowmelt and wide shots of brilliantly colored auroras in the skies above the Nordic country. As its name implies, storms of all sorts serve as a common thread for the piece.

In Iceland there are many kinds of storms. Ice, snow, rain, sand, ash, solar, magnetic, and more. Storms are agents of change. While often destructive and unpredictable, they also demonstrate the unyielding power of nature. They reveal nature’s beauty and its hand in creating the landscapes we see today.

via Vimeo Staff Picks

Windows XP, the ubiquitous operating system for computers from Microsoft, stopped receiving official support from the software company on Tuesday, April 8, 2014. Originally released in 2001, Windows XP received extended support long after the typical 10-year cycle that most Microsoft products receive. Given that it will no longer receive this support, it is recommended that users move on to a different operating system to avoid any potential security risks.

images via Wikipedia

via PCWorld

A group of young Swedish girls keeps punk alive in Lukas Moodysson‘s film We Are the Best! The story follows a couple of marginalized girls who deal with their social outcast status by starting a band. And while they’re pretty insistent that they are, indeed, the best, it looks like the band might mean a lot more to them than it does to anyone else. But that’s OK — that’s what punk rock is all about. Go your own way, forge your own identity, to hell with everyone else. The first We Are the Best! trailer is a lot of fun; watch it below.

Moodysson has made some really difficult films in the past. A Hole in My Heart, about a small group of people making an amateur porno film, is one of the hardest-to-watch films I’ve ever seen. And Lilya 4-Ever was a harrowing story of a young woman who is kidnapped as a sexual slave. While he’s made a couple of more easy-going films, too, the spirit of those super-intense films is visible even in the trailer for We Are the Best! Moodysson clearly knows his alienation, and the things these characters feel hit the screen in pure form, if this trailer is reliable. It’s just a bit easier to digest this time.

Magnolia will release We Are the Best! in select theaters May 30, 2014. Apple has the trailer.

From Swedish master Lukas Moodysson, We are the Best! revolves around three girls in 1980s Stockholm who decide to form a punk banddespite not having any instruments and being told by everyone that punk is dead. Based on a graphic novel, We are the Best! is a paean to DIY culture and the power of rebellion.

• This Week In Trailers: Mammoth, The White Ribbon, Love The Beast, Love, Starsuckers

The post ‘We Are the Best!’ Trailer: Punks Make Their Own Way appeared first on /Film.

[Video Link] Here's a video (well, real audio with some graphics) of the Los Angeles Philharmonic performing Ravel's "Daphnis and Chloé during a 5.1 magnitude earthquake. It's pretty interesting to hear the gasps and murmurs of the audience followed by the lovely music continuing without a hitch.

A couple of things to note here: 
-Walt Disney Concert Hall was built only 10 years ago and is made to withstand seismic activity.
-I work for the LA Phil and had a hand in making this video.

“Be my guest… You can come out when you learn to respect me.”

In this video, BuzzFeed shows us things that Disney characters do that’d be creepy if we did them in real life. Locking someone in a room until they respect you, combing your hair with a fork, and talking to a parrot on your shoulder just don’t seem to work like they do in the animated fantasy worlds.

Sorry, but meeting someone in the middle of their food Lady and the Tramp-style is *not* acceptable behavior.

music by Kevin MacLeod – “Ranz des Vaches”

image via BuzzFeed

Announcement: Hi everyone! I have a new book out! It’s The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy: the culmination of my journalism on hackers and cybercrime, plus my work on sex and privacy. Find out more on the book’s Smart Privacy Tumblr, get it on Amazon for Kindle, or order it DRM-free and direct from my Shopify store. I self-published it, so help me spread the word!

• When a chronic pain syndrome made sex excruciating, our writer found relief from the most surprising source. “The idea of injecting de-activated botulism into my pelvic floor was not one that thrilled me. Still, if it meant that Eric and I could have the kind of sex we used to have, it was worth a shot.”
  Botox Saved My Sex Life (DAME)

• Surprise, surprise, the mainstream porn industry is hating on Belle Knox for not being “one of them.” “(…) starting with adult performer Belle Noire’s crusade to “expose” Knox. After tweeting at Knox for weeks, last week she published an essay called “Behind the Scenes: Belle Knox,” alleging that Knox was “completely contradictory, irrelevant, and unknowledgeable of the porn industry.”
  Growing backlash against Duke porn star in adult film industry (Daily Dot)

• “You bent over to tie your shoe? Joke’s on you, let some rando pretend to penetrate you. Oh, you’re bending over to get something from your grocery basket? You’re just asking for a French comedian to make humping motions behind you.”
  Remi Gaillard’s ‘Free Sex’ Prank Is The Opposite Of Comedy (HuffPo)

• The average earnings of a full-time Phone Sex Operator (PSO) earns around $40,000 per year.
  Talking Dirty: The Women Who Still Make Bank as Phone Sex Operators (NAME)

• In December, the online travel company surveyed 1,000 air travelers and found that nine per cent of them reported being intimate on a plane at least once. “It happens more often on longer flights, of course. The transatlantic flights are the most popular, but it happens in business class as frequently or even more so than economy class, for instance.”
  Sex acts on airplanes not uncommon, experts say (CBC)

• These Awesomely Geeky Condoms Just Made Sex Even Cooler (Buzzfeed, image above via)

• “In the fashion industry, Terry Richardson’s sexual harassment is the symptom, not the disease.”
  Models Are Prey — And Not Just In Terry’s World (Buzzfeed)

• After one writer recently revealed that she’s made as much as $30,000 in a single month writing erotic ebooks featuring creatures like Bigfoot, it became clear that monster erotica has quietly become a hugely popular genre. But what attracts readers with sexy stories about mythological beasts?
  Why Is Monster Erotica So Popular Anyway? (io9)

• “Can sex save Denmark?”, the advert asks. Hotel rooms are one of life’s great aphrodisiacs – at least that’s the theory behind a new campaign from Danish package-holiday specialist Spies Rejser. Its latest TV campaign, Do It For Denmark, aims to encourage Danes to go on holiday in the hope that they might procreate while abroad.
  Sun, sex and a baby: the unusual package holiday for Danes (Guardian)

• Former porn performer “Melissa Midwest” Harrington is being dropped as the face of a multibillion-dollar Manhattan lawsuit against Match.com, making her the second woman since January to be removed from top billing in the case. Once among the top 10 most-searched names on the Internet, she recently demanded that she be removed from the class-action, trademark-infringement suit.
  Match.com lawsuit loses second lead plaintiff (NY Post)

• Nuts, the weekly that along with arch-rival Zoo shook up the men’s magazine market a decade ago but attracted criticism for their sexist portrayal of women, is to close.
  Nuts magazine to close (Guardian)

• “I compartmentalized my disability and my sexuality like it was my job until after college. Then I realized I wanted to actually have sex instead of just picking it apart in sociology class. So, like any self-respecting queer lady, I turned to the internet — and met Alex.”
  Know Me Where It Hurts: Sex, Kink, and Cerebral Palsy (Autostraddle)

• Photographer Meg Allen celebrates “those who choose to exist and identify outside the gender binary” through a series of stunning portraits.
  Photographing The Butch Women Of San Francisco (Buzzfeed)