Grumpy Vader, do you approve? "Nooooooooo!"

No, Grumpy Cat did not join the dark side. The dark side joined him.

-via Fashionably Geek

(Photo: unknown)

The day we RSS fans have been dreading for months is almost here. On Monday, Google Reader dies. Forever. There's no going back. Everybody's been hawking their replacements, and we've brought you a little sampling, but now it's decision time. Who you goin' with?

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Considering the first teaser trailer for Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac hit earlier this morning, I thought now was as good a time as any to post this rare Lars Von Trier home movie. It seems to center around an unnamed female protagonist who escapes the ennui of her middle class life by dressing like a pig and trying to suckle a brood of bulldogs. It’s an interesting glimpse into the mind of man who would later become an acclaimed filmmaker. In the woman having her pig costumes’ nipples chewed raw by horny bulldog puppies, you can spot glimpses of themes that Von Trier would later explore to greater effect in Antichrist. In the on-location shooting, use of natural lighting and sound, and hand-held camera work, one can already see a proto-Dogme 95 style, the tenets of which would be codified and legitimized only a few years later. Interestingly of all, you can see in the actress’s smile a joy, an innocence, a joie de vivre, that would be sorely lacking in some of Von Trier’s bleak later work. What was the cause of this shift?

Either that, or it’s just this video of a lady letting her dogs nurse at a pig costume that I found on the internet. I’m not really sure. I’ll have to get back to you. (This lady and the walrus guy should hook up).

[IHeartChaos]

In celebration of the Supreme Court overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, The New Yorker’s cover features Bert and Ernie together on the couch watching the ruling on TV, experiencing, as the title of the piece puts it, a “Moment of Joy”…

When the question of Bert and Ernie’s orientation has been raised before, the official word from Sesame Street has been that they are “just friends” and aren’t gay because, despite being humanish, they’re still only puppets and puppets don’t have sexual orientations. (Which, of course, means they’re not straight either.)

Despite Sesame Street’s (non)stance on the issue, Jack Hunter, the creator of the original image that was adapted for the New Yorker cover explains…

I thought they were well suited to represent how a lot of gay couples must have felt.… after all, they’ve been together for almost 50 years … as “just friends” or otherwise.

An anonymous reader sends this news from Ars Technica: "Using online anonymity services such as Tor or sending encrypted e-mail and instant messages are grounds for U.S.-based communications to be retained by the National Security Agency, even when they're collected inadvertently, according to a secret government document published Thursday. ...The memos outline procedures NSA analysts must follow to ensure they stay within the mandate of minimizing data collected on U.S. citizens and residents. While the documents make clear that data collection and interception must cease immediately once it's determined a target is within the U.S., they still provide analysts with a fair amount of leeway. And that leeway seems to work to the disadvantage of people who take steps to protect their Internet communications from prying eyes. For instance, a person whose physical location is unknown—which more often than not is the case when someone uses anonymity software from the Tor Project—"will not be treated as a United States person, unless such person can be positively identified as such, or the nature or circumstances of the person's communications give rise to a reasonable belief that such person is a United States person," the secret document stated.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slowing down the Seinfeld theme by 1200% turns it into a David Lynch soundtrack, full of nightmares and menace, as Gorge Catanda demonstrates with this 8 minutes youtube. You may recall that Inception pulled the same trick, massively slowing down the film's Edith Piaf themesong to produce a grinding, subliminally identifiable soundscape.

What if the senfeld theme was slowed down 1200%? (via Kottke)

Now this is impressive: It's called the Atlas of True Names, and it reveals the etymological origins and translations of familiar place names whose original meanings we've mostly forgotten. Looking at it, you'd think North America was some sort of fantasy novel.

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From the depths of Lorne Michaels’ secret dungeon archive come these classic, outtake-riddled auditions tapes from some comedy legends.

Jimmy Fallon

Phil Hartman

Dana Carvey

Dan Aykroyd

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View Entire List ›

HEY THINK FAS- too slow.

Eric Guzman decided to combine his two favorite comic book characters—Spider-Man and Batman—into a single mutant animal-themed hero. And he just kept going, coming up with Spider-Bat's rogues gallery and more DC/Marvel mashed-up heroes.

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Pity Brazil’s atheists, who live in a country with myriad ways to worship and feel like foreigners in their own home.

They live in the country with the world’s largest Roman Catholic population, at 125 million faithful.

President Dilma Rousseff has told no less than Pope Francis himself that “God is Brazilian.” And many folks pray to Afro-Brazilian saints or, after attending Mass, communicate with the dead.

“You have to be brave to say you are atheist. So there are still a lot of atheists in the closet,” said Daniel Sottomaior, president of the Brazilian Association of Atheists and Agnostics, which is fighting prejudice and discrimination against people who do not believe in God.

Sottomaior, a 41-year-old civil engineer who lives in Sao Paulo and has received anonymous death threats, says that in Brazil — which will host a major Catholic festival called World Youth Day on July 22-28 in Rio and the pope’s first overseas visit — “atheists are likened to criminals.”

In Brazil, there is more violence against blacks or homosexuals because they cannot hide. But atheists also suffer physical threats at times, or are fired from their jobs or disowned by their families when they go public with their beliefs.

“Every time people speak about a criminal, about someone who is inhumane, about a woman who is beating a small dog to death, the expression you hear is, ‘They have no God in their heart.’ Here, being atheist is the cause of all crime,” Sottomaior said.

In an unprecedented conviction over discrimination against atheists, a TV network called Bandeirantes was found guilty after one of its presenters said that the killing of a child could only have been done by atheists. The presenter also blamed atheists for “war, plague, hunger and everything else.”

“Atheists suffer a lot (…) They are considered people without morals, like weirdos, like foreigners within Brazil,” said Renata Menezes, who researches the anthropology of worship at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

According to Elias Wolff, an advisor on inter-faith issues for the Brazil Bishops Confederation, discrimination and prejudice “exist unfortunately,” especially among “some religious groups of fundamentalist nature.”

“The Catholic church as an institution believes in the right not to profess any faith, understands that and seeks to understand why the numbers of people in Brazil with no religion are growing. And it is always willing to establish a dialogue with them,” Wolff told AFP.

Some 84 percent of Brazilians would elect a black person to be president, 57 percent would give the job to a woman, and 32 percent would vote for a homosexual. But only 13 percent would elect an atheist, according to a poll by the magazine Veja in 2007, the last of its kind done in Brazil.

Rousseff declared herself to be “without religion” in 2007. But during the campaign that led to her election as president in 2010, she emphasized that she was “first of all, Christian, and secondly, Catholic”.

In the last census, conducted in 2010, atheists and agnostics numbered just 740,000 people out of a population of 190 million — or 0.39 percent.

But Sottomaior criticizes the methodology used in that census and says the figure is more like two percent, as many atheists are lumped into a broad category called people “without religion,” which includes both believers and non-believers.

His organization, founded five years ago, has 8,800 members but nearly 250,000 fans on Facebook.

Brazilians in general are very religious, and following just one faith is sometimes not enough. So often they adhere to two or three at once “to increase their protection against ill fortune,” said Fernando Teixeira, an expert in religions at Juiz de Fora Federal University in Minas Gerais.

Catholicism is losing its appeal quickly in Brazil. The proportion of people who call themselves Catholics has fallen from 91.8 percent of the population in 1970 to 64.6 percent in 2010.

But evangelicals – mainly pentecostals — are gaining strength, and now account for 22.2 percent of the population, and the “without religion” camp has gone from 0.8 percent in 1970 to eight percent in 2010, according to figures from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, drawn from the last census.

To be without religion does not necessarily mean no religion at all: some may be atheists but there are also non-practicing Catholics, and evangelicals who do not have institutionalized practices.

Others are spiritists — followers of the 19th century French educator Allan Kardec, who feel that spiritism — the belief in the survival of a spirit after death — is a doctrine and not a religion.

In Brazil, religions and religious content are blended and people “create their own individual menu,” says Ronaldo de Almeida, a professor at the University of Campinas who researches the phenomenon of “religious transit.”

“There are a lot of ways to be Catholic in Brazil,” says Teixeira. He cites a study which suggests that nearly half of Brazilian Catholics believe in reincarnation.

“Here there is a lot of praying and not much Mass, a lot of saints and not many priests,” he concludes, alluding to the large number of non-practicing Catholics and the widespread custom of worshipping Catholic or Afro-Brazilian saints — sometimes all at once — and treating them as if they were family.

If you're studying for the algebra test tomorrow or thinking about how little you use math now after you failed it a million times in high school, here's something to melt your brain with just a tad: math might not actually exist. It's not an actual thing of the universe, it's just something humans invented. Or is it the other way around?

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I try not to seek out the "best" of anything. The idea of best is so subjective, it becomes useless. Try picking a "best" car, for example. I'll save you the hassle: you can't. But there is one exception. It's for the overall concept of personal transportation, and the person who did it best was Alberto Santos-Dumont.

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Holy hell, they're making a movie based on Bill Willingham's acclaimed Fables comic. Please be good. Please be good. Please be good. Please be good. Please be good. Please be good. Please be good. Please be good.

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Google street view has something for everyone

The latest episode of Game of Thrones was pretty much business as usual. It turned out Walder Frey was ready to let bygones be bygones, and a lovely wedding feast was held for Edmure and Roslin. Wine flowed, and music played.

I mean, they played the Lannister family song at a Tully wedding, which I thought was pretty rude. It's like, why are they playing that song?

Why are they playing that -- oh.

You should definitely watch the episode before you read this recap. I really mean it this time. If you read recaps of things you haven't read or seen and then complain about spoilers, I hope you marry a Frey.

Book fans have been waiting for the Red Wedding since the series began, most of us quietly sitting on our hands and gnawing on our knuckles the closer we got to the mighty, shocking event. This is the sort of event that spoiler warnings were invented to conceal, as Gus Mastrapa points out in this lovely piece on the long wait for others to learn the secret so many were keeping.

I knew what was coming, and it was still incredibly gutting television. What I didn't expect was just how broadly the impact reverberated -- crying about fantasy character deaths was the kind of thing that would have gotten you punched in high school, and now we have @RedWeddingTears, a brilliant Twitter feed curating all the outrage across mainstream social media. It's funny, especially because so many people seem to blame HBO as an entity, alongside the show's writers, D.B. Weiss and David Benioff. Maybe they don't know A Song of Ice and Fire was a series of books at all.

In this interview, George R.R. Martin talks about why he brutally killed off beloved characters in one fell swoop -- and arguably more importantly, effectively ended the war effort of the Starks, the story's favorite family. For the author it's about surprise, and ensuring readers never get the story arcs they expect.

It's an innovative choice for the fantasy genre, which has for years been led by predictable tropes. Set in quaint lands with old social orders and often including feuding races, fantasy books tend to be a way to process social anxiety and examine ideas of heroism. That can result in narrative arcs with predictable moral ends -- the heroes will be tested, but in the end they must win. It's brave, in a sense, of an author to take on this established expectation and challenge an audience eagerly anticipating gratification of a certain kind.

It's new for TV, too. I've heard a lot of buzz from viewers saying they've never experienced something quite so shocking and absolute on their evening program before. From the event itself to the anticipation, spoiler-guarding and aftermath, the Red Wedding feels culturally momentous, no doubt a unique feeling for the quiet sorts who first fell in love with Martin's less-known, sprawling tomes over a decade ago.

I can't imagine what it would have been like to watch the episode not knowing what was going to occur, but for those who knew, the show was strewn with so many delightful little tells -- the ominous music as Stark banners approached the Twins, the splash and spill of red wine at the tables during the festivities, a tight shot of the musicians who would later play The Rains of Castamere as a signal for the assault. Walder Frey's magnanimous statement to his throne room that "the wine will flow red, the music will play loud" could even be seen as some kind of coded signal to his men to go forward with the plan.

The book eventually makes it explicit that Roslin Frey, Edmure's bride, was aware of her family's plan and forced to participate, as she wept during her marriage and seemed unduly anxious. The show is much more subtle, her stricken look easily mistaken for an especially nervous young bride at her wedding to a stranger. But knowing what's to happen makes her dread little whisper -- "I hope I do not disappoint you" -- so delicately weighted.

The most grueling thing about the gory losses that close this episode is that fundamentally the rest of the episode is about the Stark family, estranged from one another by war but holding fast to their values while apart. It opens with something of a reconciliation between Robb and his mother, his acknowledgment that he ought to have followed her advice and trusted her judgment.

If he'd only listened to her about mistrusting Theon as an envoy, perhaps Winterfell would still be standing and the Stark sons wouldn't have been killed (few know that Bran and Rickon actually escaped, making Catelyn's worry for her last living son and her desperate ache to see her daughters again that much more touching). And while Catelyn's choice to set Jaime Lannister free was a selfish decision, the fact that Jaime was able to save Brienne and to take up her mission to retrieve the Stark daughters probably spells a higher chance of having them returned than trusting in Cersei, Joffrey and Tywin at King's Landing.

It's not just maternal instinct: Catelyn is wise. She has a spine of steel and a good military mind as well -- better, at least, than her brother Edmure Tully, whose Frey marriage is the best penance he can make to the Starks for his folly at war. Catelyn has, of course, had a bad feeling about Robb's marriage from the beginning, so his acknowledgement of his mother's wisdom in some things and not that crucial thing over the war table is bittersweet.

Even though a siege on Casterly Rock is a risky, desperate thing to do, even assuming the fickle Freys lend their strength, there are really no alternatives. As the family procession approaches the Twins, we believe somehow the Starks have to prevail, after having suffered so much. They just have to get through this wedding. Urgh.

The bread and salt served to everyone in the throne room is significant. Eating one's bread and salt ensures you have "guest right" in their home, and to harm someone to whom you've given guest right is almost a spiritual violation. Robb makes very elaborate and graceful apologies to the Frey family even as Walder pervs on his wife, and doofus Edmure just looks concerned that none of the Frey daughters are pretty, increasing his anxiety that he'll be disappointed with his bride.

Walder makes a great show of being offended, of implying that perhaps Robb Stark just felt he was too good for one of the Frey girls, but eventually appears to concede to the marriage. Oh, good, that solves that.

In Yunkai, Daario Naharis, who recently won over Daenerys Targaryen by killing his comrades in support of her beauty, hatches an incredibly risky plan to sack the city, one that puts her best men -- loyal Jorah Mormont and Grey Worm of the Unsullied at risk. I haven't heard from anyone who likes the portrayal of Daario, who in the books is a swashbuckling, lusty Tyroshi with a dyed, sculpted beard. Such a grand look might be distracting for the show, which seems to disdain unnecessary flashiness (According to the books Renly's bannermen were all meant to be wearing rainbow cloaks, which would probably have been both too garish and too literal for the program).

But I don't think one is meant to like sloe-eyed, grinning Daario, or to empathize with Dany's attraction to him and his corny pickup lines. Her attraction makes her more liable to like and trust the romantic mercenary, which suggests something of a flaw in her silver queen's armor. It must be hard for Mormont, too, who's been silently in love with her all this time. Daario's implication that Mormont's suspicion means he's probably a dishonest person is an interesting stab.

We've been able to admire Daenerys because she's moved through an inhospitable land refusing to allow herself to be underestimated or diminished by men. But one "I serve beauty" from a guy whose dagger hilts are shaped like nude women, and she's willing to put her loyal old Mormont in harm's way? No, we aren't meant to like Daario, even when he proves dependable and orchestrates the sack of Yunkai on her behalf, ultimately prevailing: he's a device to remind us Dany is still quite a young girl, barely able to hide her desire to see him unharmed after the battle.

I have a controversial confession: I didn't find Arya Stark interesting in the books. She is a conventional archetype, the girl men are supposed to admire because she takes up a sword and is physically brave in a man's world. Especially as I work in video games, I tend to be unhappy when the "strong female character" -- i.e, the one that best wears traditionally-masculine traits -- is held up as the most popular way for women to be admirable. It's simplistic, lacks imagination, doesn't require much empathy.

But. But! I love Maisie Williams' portrayal of Arya, a tough kid finding her way in the world who still openly wants her family again, doesn't dare to hope she can have them back. I thought I'd never like anything so much as the complexity and nuance of her scenes last season posing as Tywin Lannister's cupbearer, but I love her with The Hound as well. Arya's experience of the adults in her world sheds more light on them, and we get crucial perspective from her.

Arya begging The Hound not to kill the old cart-driver isn't just Arya being a tough kid -- it's Arya being a Stark. The series opened with Eddard's important lesson about executions -- if you sentence a man to die under the law, you kill him yourself. Ned Stark would have never killed an old cart driver.

Nor would he have killed an old horseman. Arya's standing up to The Hound has parallels in Jon's standing up to the Wildlings, even at the risk of earning their fatal distrust and damaging his relationship with Ygritte. His inability to kill an innocent friend of the Night's Watch is the last straw for Orell and Tormund.

Even Ygritte urges him to do it, perhaps afraid of what it means if he can't. She's never asked for him to prove himself before. Yet even when Jon can't come through, she can't bring herself to stop defending him, though he tries to stop her from turning against her own people by bumping her into the mud. Remember a few episodes ago Jon asked Orell what would happen to his eagle if he killed him? He gets an answer.

All the while, of course, Bran is achingly close to his half-brother, even closer than Arya was while gazing at her family's location across a river. Bran is able to save Jon by inhabiting his direwolf, Summer, and along with Rickon's Shaggydog the Stark wolves help Jon get away from a people and a value system that could never be wholly his. Ygritte's stricken face as Jon rides off without so much as a look back is painful to behold.

Part of what's so hard about this episode is that the Stark family draws nearer to one another than ever since the war, and no reunion ever occurs. In fact, little Rickon and Bran need to be separated now, as Bran's ability to possess Hodor's mind proves even to Osha that the boy is on a dangerous spirit quest where she can't follow. Bad memories and fears keep her from ever journeying North of the Wall again, but she can take Rickon to House Umber, Stark bannermen that can be relied upon to protect him.

Back at the Twins, we get more of an idea that Roose Bolton, who sent Jaime back to the Lannisters before coming to this wedding, is not so good a guy. We're again reminded he doesn't drink (a fact Jaime thinks makes him hard to trust), and we learn he married the heaviest Frey wife because he wanted the money offered for her weight. That kind of transaction disgusts Catelyn, again delineating the difference between the Starks and other people.

The wedding band begins playing The Rains of Castamere as a signal to begin the massacre. Last episode, Cersei explained to Margaery the tune is about the perils of standing up to the Lannisters. Only Catelyn seems discomfited by the song, suspicious of it, as guards pull shut the door to the dining hall. Perhaps the Hound is alerted by it too -- when their cart is stopped by guards at the gate and Arya bolts, he decides to investigate rather than chase her. Earlier Arya knocked out the cart driver as a way of proving she isn't too kind to survive; Sandor Clegane's knocking Arya out in turn here is most definitely a kindness. He knows she mustn't see what's going on inside, and that it's already too late.

What can I say about the rest of it? It's truly unspeakable, and that is a sort of miracle in and of itself.

You don't have to love Robb or Talisa or Catelyn for it to matter. It's the sad death of what their family stood for, that the wife of a man who was too noble for a rowdy bedding ceremony dies because her hostage, Walder Frey's wife, was worth nothing to him (in the books Catelyn killed Walder Frey's mentally-handicapped son, but this is clearly a wiser adaptation). It's Catelyn's maternal grief that carved me personally. She has borne a succession of losses -- her husband, her children, her eldest son, a war -- and she breaks at Walder Frey's feet, just another founting corpse. I can't remember ever seeing a fantasy story so unafraid to be so cruel.

Whether or not you were prepared for the events, how did the Red Wedding affect you?

Phew. Okay. Lighter stuff. How many "Wedding Crashers" memes featuring Roose Bolton and Walder Frey have you seen this week? Did you, like me, think of the "Arrested Westeros" crossover blog when Robb delivered that portentious "made a huge mistake" line? Are we okay?

Am I the last person to hear about this? I’ve always wondered how people seem to pull up such amazing and relevant animated GIFs in forums and comment sections of websites. It turns out that it’s not that hard, especially if you’ve got an animated GIF search engine like Giphy. Now the magic is ruined forever. People just search for them instead of keeping them on hand for specific occasions.

The post Search for animated GIFs with Giphy appeared first on Doobybrain.com.

Have I mentioned recently that we have a facebook group? Only badasses are allowed in. Good luck.

Besides drinking it. Obvi.

Shampoo with it.

Add an ounce to your bottle of shampoo to fight oil buildup. (And don't worry; since vodka is odorless, you won't walk into work smelling like a bar.)

Source: mia-culpa.tumblr.com

Make your flowers last longer.

Here's something I'm going to do to my vase of peonies as soon as I get home: Add a few drops of vodka and a teaspoon of sugar to the water in your flower vase.

Painlessly remove a Band-Aid.

Take a cotton ball and soak it with vodka, then saturate the bandage; the vodka will dissolve the adhesive.

Source: wikihow.com

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View Entire List ›

The image you see above comes from Redditor “manolo88″ who earlier today wrote, “My Turkish friend posted this on Facebook, on the left is Turkish CNN, and on the right is international CNN.” Should you think, as I originally did, that maybe the TV on the left was airing a commercial or digitally manipulated, think again.

Turk here. I can see why you would think that but, nope, this is exactly what it looks like. It was a long documentary about penguins, I think this one and this is just one of the many programs they keep showing while Turkey is burning. Before the penguin show there was a cooking show, if I remember correctly.

They refuse to share atrocities going on in all over Turkey and what little news they do offer either doesn’t pay justice to the gravity of the situation, or consists of airing the speeches of government officials who try to put the blame on the protesters. Turkish brand of CNN really did drop the ball on this one and there is a massive boycott and uproar against them right now, along with other TVs and newspapers that remain quiet. (Via)

In other words:

(Via Reddit)

GOTTA GO FAST

xombiedirge:

Spaghetti Gotham by Giovanni Costa / Store

image via The Logo Company

The colors companies use in their logos, websites, and other properties has a profound impact on how customers think of and feel about those companies. The above infographic from The Logo Company shows which emotions people associate with different colors, and gives examples of the companies that tend to make use of them. Analytics company KISSmetrics also created an infographic that shows how different colors affect which customers will purchase a product.

image by KISSmetrics via Buffer

via Buffer, The Orange

Photographer Paul Octavious has been matching Pantone color swatches to real world objects in his photos series #thepantoneproject. You can follow along on his Instagram.

via Complex

[link] [67 comments]

Laugh all you want about the increasing likelihood that the lumpy, goofy mayor of Toronto smoked crack on video and is in the process of covering it up, but The Toronto Star reports in today's paper that Rob Ford told his staff about the video, and told them he knew exactly where it was stashed ... which is alarming considering that exact address may be home to the men who may have killed to get their hands on the tape.

"Toronto Mayor Rob Ford told senior aides not to worry about a video appearing to show him smoking crack cocaine because he knew where it was," the Star's Robert Benzie and Kevin Donovan write. Apparently this occurred on May 17, the day when Gawker and the Star both reported viewing a video in which Ford smokes crack, and the day when Gawker announced it was going to start fundraising $200,000 in order to purchase the video. "Ford then blurted out the address of two 17th-floor units — 1701 and 1703 — at a Dixon Rd. apartment complex ...The mayor cited 'our contacts' as the source of his information," the Star's team adds. As of two weeks ago, it sounds like Ford thought he had control of the story.

About the mayoral staff and addresses, though: On Monday, a similar report surfaced from further down the chain at city hall, with The Globe and Mail reporting that a senior staffer had met with police and told them he or she knew the address — and exact unit number — where the video was being held, and that the "video originally belonged to an individual who may have been killed for its potentially valuable contents." The man who may have been killed for the video is Anthony Smith, a 21-year-old man pictured with Ford in several stories published about the video and someone who appeared to have had some knowledge of the alleged crack-smoking.  Smith was shot and killed in March. Ford, as the Globe and Mail reported, said he did not know Smith. 

Did Ford have direct contact with "our contacts" at this shady address? Maybe not: His chief of staff and director of logistics were the politicians with answers on the day the story broke. But how Ford came to knew of this address — especially if that turns out to be a murderous locale, in addition to a holding ground for a scandalous videotape — will be key as the truth continues to leak out. The Star's team says they've visited the units in question and that they have "been told by neighbours that numerous young men are seen coming and going there at all hours of the night and day. Nobody said they had seen Ford." 

Another way into the story, of course, is the murder of Smith. If you find out who killed Smith, who may be the original owner of the video or had some knowledge of the video, then you could — if Smith was really killed for the video — work your way to the two apartment addresses, and perhaps make the connection to Ford and his office. Police on Thursday announced they had a arrested a second man in connection with Smith's shooting. The man is 23-year-old Hanad Mohamed of Toronto, who now — along with Nisar Hashimi — faces first-degree murder charges. "Sources familiar with the investigation said detectives have obtained search warrants for Mr. Mohamed's cellphone and homes and are looking for at least one other suspect," The Globe and Mail reported on Thursday.

That may be the trail back to the video, but it's also difficult to find out who's trying to sell it at the moment. Gawker has announced that it surpassed its goal of raising $200,000, but before that, Gawker editor John Cook wrote that his contact with the sellers had dropped off. "The last time we established contact with the people who are in possession of the video was this past Sunday, and we have not been able to reach them since," Cook wrote last Thursday. And he reiterated as much on Tuesday, when he announced the fundraising project had mets its goal:

I updated the Indiegogo campaign site yesterday morning to reiterate that there had been no movement on that front, and am repeating it here right now. You won't hear anything more from us about our attempts to get the video for some time. This will be a very delicate transaction. If the people who are in possession of the video are reading this: Please get in touch with our mutual friend, or with me at john@gawker.com. We did what you asked.

If Gawker's sellers are connected to Hashimi and Mohamed and the murder of Smith, the disappearance would make sense, but it also turns a great tabloid story into a grizzly black-market tale of corruption, murder, drugs, and greed.

When was the last time you watched a porn flick? It doesn’t matter whether you are a man or woman, straight or gay, or whether it was a "romantic" or a “gonzo” video. Chances are you watched it on a digital TV, computer or mobile device like a smartphone or tablet, and that you accessed it via an Internet connection.

According to one estimate, there are nearly 25 million porn sites worldwide and they make up 12 percent of all websites. Sebastian Anthony, writing for ExtremeTech, reports that Xvideos is the biggest porn site on the web, receiving 4.4 billion page views and 350 million unique visits per month. He claims porn accounts for 30 percent of all web traffic. Based on Google data, the other four of the top five porn sites, and their monthly page views (pvs) are: PornHub, 2.5 billion pvs; YouPorn, 2.1 billion pvs; Tube8, 970 million pvs; and LiveJasmin, 710 million pvs. In comparison, Wikipedia gets about 8 billion pvs.

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This is a decent sized series of Game of Thrones characters reimagined as Magic: The Gathering cards by tumblr-er JermTube. Man, I remember playing Magic in high school. Whenever I'd start losing I'd put the dice in my mouth and swish them around until my opponent forfeited. It was a solid strategy. Hit the jump for two more 10-card sets. Thanks to lowjack, who was the Magic champion of the high school lunchroom and people would bring him juice boxes and cookies out of respect.