1. Put professional wedding photogs to shame with your phone and these tips (GeekSugar)
2. Disney is really invested in Merida being a proper princess (The Mary Sue)
3. Here are some stupid soccer tricks to keep you amused this afternoon (Sportsgrid)
4. Flavorwire’s favorite Arrested Development character is George Michael (Flavorwire)
5. Dear Mad Men: You are getting really weird (Mediaite)
6. There are some really dark things going on right under the skin of your favorite superhero movie (Cracked)
7. David Karp’s press release announcing the Tumblr purchase is priceless (UPROXX)

(Title pic via Daily Picks and Flicks)

Remember that scene in Apollo 13 where the NASA engineers had to come up with a way for the astronauts to fit a square filter in a round hole using only things already on board the craft? The Mythbusters did that for Chris Hadfield when he was still on the International Space Station. They weren’t fixing an air filter, but they took care of an important problem

Boredom.

There are only so many things to do on the space station. It’s mostly work along with some eating and exercise, but in terms of recreation the options are pretty limited. In this new video by Tested.com Commander Hadfield shows off the in-flight Scrabble board as well as his own game, Space Darts.

The Mythbusters wanted to give Hadfield and the other astronauts more options, so they set out to create a game that can not only be played in space — it can only be played in space. It’s a pretty interesting concept, and it’s one more reason we want to go to space.

Alright, so it worked rather less well than they had hoped, but I’m sure with some refinement the astronauts on the ISS can make this thing a reality.

The real bonus of this video is that we all get to feel like Hadfield is still in space.

(via Tested.com on YouTube, Thanks to Daniel Portolan)

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I’m sure there are a lot of you out there who utterly get, in a second nature sort of way, how algorithms work. I, however, am not among them. I mean, I know that algorithms are ‘a way that computers sort information to figure things out,’ but that’s basically one step up from saying ‘magic.’ Lucky for me and the rest of the folks out there who don’t quite get the what an algorithm is, Harvard computer scientist David J. Malan is is here to narrate a TEDEd cartoon on the subject that will save us all from ignorance.

So by all means, watch and learn. Spolier alert: it turns out that you’re already making algorithms in your head, and they’re really not that complicated. It’s just hard to teach a computer to do them because computers are dumber than your brain. Hooray for your brain!

(via TEDEd)

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Tomorrow is Microsoft’s big Xbox event, so to try and steal their thunder Sony released a sneak peek of the PS4 hardware. It’s a blurry wide shot of the box cut, with quick flashes of close ups. If they showed the box itself we’d be excited. Instead we’re just disappointed — again. Sony, if you want to steal someone’s thunder by showing your junk — you need to show your junk. Let’s break down this failure frame by frame.

First, take a look at the blurry let-down that is this video:

Feeling super-pumped about the PS4 now? Neither am I. Let’s take a closer look at what we actually see in this video, and to make it interesting I’m going to pretend to be super-pumped about everything. It’s fun to pretend!

Wow! Look how box-like that blur is! Is it a cube? A rectangular prism? The obelisk from 2001? The possibilities are endless!

OMG, you guys! The PlayStation 4 is going to have the PlayStation logo! What!? #GameChanger!

What’s this thing? Who knows! Let’s be pumped about it anyway!

Rounded lines in a vaguely circular pattern! Circles were totally Microsoft’s thing! Take that, Xbox!

Here’s a vent maybe! I don’t know. It looks venty. Air flow!

This is either a weird angle on the controller, or some kind of robot crotch.

This looks like the top of a film slate! Will the PS4 have built-in film slate technology? Probably not! That’d be dumb!

STRAIGHT! LINES!

This isn’t your grandfather’s PlayStation. Check out those jaunty angels!

Who could even begin to guess what these evenly spaced rectangles are all about. I bet they make the graphics look AMAZING.

We see this upside-down triangle a few times in the video — AT DIFFERENT ORIENTATIONS!Is it a 4? A tent? Some third triangular thing? We don’t know, but Sony sure likes showing it off!

What up, polka dots?

The PlayStation 4 is even branded with Wall-E’s face!

That could be a camera! Hooray!

Whaaaaaaaat?! More vents probably maybe or something else entirely!

Are those controller buckets or a high-end faucet? Who knows!

More dots, and the even more slightly bigger dots! SO MANY DOTS!

WHAT! Did you guys get J.J. freaking Abrams to produce this thing? Check out that killer lens flare!

Given all these sweet details I’ve taken the liberty of mocking up what the PS4 probably looks like:

Ugh. Alright. That’s all the fake enthusiasm I can stand. This is clearly just an attention grab by Sony before Microsoft actually shows us their system — which is what you’re supposed to do at an unveiling event, Sony. Stop being coy with the way the system looks. It’s the least important detail, and holding out on it is just making us think you don’t even really have a system to show.

(via YouTube)

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The news broke yesterday that Yahoo will pay $1.1 billion for the Internet’s foremost source for cat GIFs and teenage poetry, Tumblr. Not everyone is taking the news well, but Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has stated that she promises “not to screw it up.” Then she outlined a plan to feature more ads on Tumblr. That sounds a lot like screwing up Tumblr.

When we reported that the deal to purchase Tumblr was approved by the Yahoo board, we were also curious about what exactly Yahoo would do with the service. According to a post on Mayer’s Tumblr, the plan is to let the service continue operating independently with David Karp remaining on as CEO. Mayer’s Tumblr post focuses primarily on praising Tumblr for what it does well, but there may be a dark lining to that silver cloud. On the point of advertising, Mayers said, “The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience.”

Because yeah, advertisements always enhance user experience, right?

Nobody wants to hear that a service they use is ramping up ad efforts, and the news is already having consequences.

Yahoo’s purchase has reportedly sparked an exodus from Tumblr to competing blog platform WordPress. Of course, that claim is coming from the founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, so take it for what it’s worth, but he’s saying the number of imported posts has jumped from an average of 400-600 posts per hour to a total of 72,000 Tumblr refugees seeking asylum on WordPress.

Despite bragging about those numbers, Mullenweg went back and updated his post to say, “I don’t think there will be an exodus from Tumblr.” With such an increase in people leaving one site for the other, though, we don’t really know what else to call it.

Mayer laid out the plan for Tumblr in more detail on a conference call this morning with investors. She cited that Tumblr only produced $13 million in ad revenue last year, which does seem low considering its considerable user base. That user base may be largely due to the fact that Tumblr is so ad-light, though, and users aren’t the only ones likely to push back against an increase in ads. Mayer said that Karp himself has been “skeptical” of ads on Tumblr.

It seems like there’s push back from users of any service when they increase ad presence, but sites like Facebook and Twitter have survived monetization, so are people overreacting to the Tumblr news? It’s easy enough to ignore online ads, but they seem to irritate a lot of people. If you use Tumblr, are you planning to dump it now that you can expect an increase in advertising?

(via TechCrunch, Matt Mullenweg’s Blog, Marissa Mayer’s Tumblr , image via Josh James)

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One of the big problems facing hospitals in general is the allocation of resources. This includes people as well as devices. When the nurse has to take time tracking down a specific doodad, not knowing there are some in the room next door, that’s time not spent helping patients. Nobody wants that, patients or otherwise. It’s a waste of time.

AgileTrac keeps, well, track of these things through the use of a combination of radio trackers and infrared lights. They can then build a database of information on how long certain tasks take, or how much time is spent with each patient, to figure out better methods. The ideal goal would be to make the whole process one smooth and fast interaction.

Nobody wants to wait in hospitals, and AgileTrac aims to make that a reality.

While being fitted for an ankle monitor — the must-have spring accessory for any fashion forward petty criminal — a 16-year-old burglar in the United Kingdom had a brainstorm, taking off for a brisk run around his block before returning. The young convict wasn’t trying to escape his captors, though — just irk them. By taking a dash around the neighborhood while his ankle monitor was being set, the hoodlum expanded the range of his own captivity.

The young criminal, whose name was not released, waited until representatives from the G4S security company were setting his ankle monitor so it would alert police if he left his home or yard during curfew hours. To make sure the settings were accurate, they had the captive kid take a stroll around his house to set parameters for the device. Once he was out the door, though, the young man went fugitive — if only for a moment.

That was long enough to take a quick jog that gave him full reign of the neighborhood, though, much to the consternation of police officers, landlords and judges involved in the case. The range-broadening tactic was only discovered after he missed a mandated check in with his landlady but failed to set off the alarm on his ankle.

Granted, all the good that comes out of this for the young burglar is an expansion of his cell to one small neighborhood. Considering that his other option was being confined to just one house, though, it seems safe to say that the bad guys won this round, even if it was a small victory.

(via The Telegraph, image courtesy of ScramX)

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Since I’m a rational, right-thinking person, it should come as no surprise that the last two Batman games — Arkham Asylum and Arkham City — rank among my favorite video game offerings in recent memory. With Rockstar giving up development duties for the series, though, my excitement for Arkham Origins has been tempered. The fact that one of my favorite DCU villains — the assassin and Dark Knight arch-rival Deathstroke — will be playable in the upcoming title, could change that. All of a sudden, that teaser vid for the title we were so excited about makes way more sense, so congratulations, Arkham Origins: I am officially psyched for you to come out.

While I have pretty mixed felings on DLC in general — and on buying new games in particular, which doesn’t make much sense for me considering how many great older titles I haven’t played yet — you can color my attention got on this one. New DLC isn’t usually going to be a thing that sells me on a game. Then again…come on, it’s Deathstroke.  As for whether I’ll go so far as to pre-order it…well, it’s a foregone conclusion that I’m going to play Arkham Origins. If the previous two titles in the series are any indication, in fact, I’m going to play the pants off of it before sending it across the country for my dad to play.

So I guess the real question is if I want to play the game as Deathstroke, a question best addressed by the following sentence: “Duh, yes, that times a million.” There’s still no detail on just how playable the DCU’s favorite master mercenary will be, but whether its just a few levels or a whole new way to explore Akrham Origins (honestly, that feels like a little much to ask) it’s definitely an add-on that has me contemplating pre-ordering a game.

Since that’s more or less unheard of, I’m apparently pretty impressed by this. Like, more than I expected to be. Apparently, I have underestimated how badly I wanted to control a digital Slade Wilson. Which I guess means it’s time to give Injustice a shot after all.

(via Polygon)

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The topic of the Alien movies came up in the office the other day, and I realized I probably haven’t watched the first two since high school at the latest. I probably would have wasted hours of my life watch Aliens again, but now thanks to 1A4 Studios I don’t have to. They’ve done a Speedrun version of Aliens that compresses it down to 60 seconds. Thanks! I remember Aliens as kind of boring.

(via YouTube)

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(Title pic via Reddit)

Yahoo is holding a big media event in New York tomorrow, at which everyone was expecting them to announce they would be buying Tumblr. Instead of waiting for the big event, The Wall Street Journal reported that Yahoo’s board has approved the Tumblr purchase and its $1.1 billion price tag, which will be paid in cash.

The report came earlier today via Twitter:

Breaking: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for the blogging site Tumblr. wsj.com

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) May 19, 2013

Seems like the thing to do would have been to announce it on Tumblr, but maybe that’s just us.

Since what was expected to be tomorrow’s big announcement has been spoiled, what will Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer talk about at tomorrow’s event? Perhaps she’ll explain what exactly Yahoo plans on doing with Tumblr.

(Twitter via Engadget, image via Scott Beale)

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Chris Hadfield had us riveted with his stream of updates from the International Space Station. We learned so much about life in space, not just from someone who had been there, but from someone while they were still there. We were a little sad to see Hadfield leave the ISS earlier this month, but we’re glad he’s back safely, and that he’s still tweeting about every step of the readjustment process.

While Hadfield was making his return trip home, he was unable to keep the world updated on his every move, so his son Evan took the reigns on his own Twitter account. When Commander Hadfield was back safe and sound on Earth he didn’t wait long to start tweeting again:

Safely home – back on Earth, happily readapting to the heavy pull of gravity. Wonderful to smell and feel Spring.

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 14, 2013

Getting back into the swing of things on Earth is probably a difficult process, but it’s nothing a good shower can’t fix:

Forgot to mention: first long, hot shower since December. That felt so good! Step 1 of Return to Earth complete.

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 14, 2013

Alright, maybe it takes a little more than a shower to get used to Earth’s gravity after a few months in space. Seems Hadfield was still a little wobbly:

Return to Gravity, so many things. It is strange to talk and feel the weight of my lips and tongue! Dizzy too – would fail any sobriety test

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 15, 2013

One of the worst things about social media is people who tweet pictures of their lunch, but considering Hadfield spent months eating space food, we’ll give him a pass for this one:

It’s cliche, but this is my 1st meal back on Earth. The smell is like an old friend. twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/… — Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 15, 2013

Just because he’s back on Earth doesn’t mean he’s done with astronaut stuff:

How does the body control blood pressure? Scarecrow on a tilt table to measure how. twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/… — Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 15, 2013

If you were worried that his stream of space photos would end now that Hadfield is back on Earth, there’s hope:

I took a few thousand more photos in space than I was able to post. I’ll try to update from here on out with at least one per day. — Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 15, 2013

Now that he’s back on Earth, Hadfield is undergoing a series of tests to see how his body responded to his time in space:

Wired head, chest, arms and feet, learning how the body works when it has been weightless for half a year. twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/…

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 16, 2013

Like, a lot of tests:

How I earned my breakfast this morning. Welcome back to Earth. twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/…

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 17, 2013

Cool hat!

This is your brain, on Earth. ESA neurological experiment measuring brainwave changes as I adapted to and from 0G. twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/…

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 17, 2013

The songs he recorded in space were some of our favorite Hadfield moments. It’s nice to see he’s getting back into it here on Earth:

Good Morning! Played some guitar last night with friends for the 1st time since landing, don’t have full breath yet, but so sweet to hear.

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 19, 2013

Hadfield’s tweets are great, but so are the ones directed him. It’s interesting to see just what it is people want to know about Hadfield’s experience and the experience of his mustache:

@cmdr_hadfield I’m very interested to learn the effects of space travel on a mustache

— Matt (@monbud) May 16, 2013

At the time of this writing, Chris Hadfield is at 982,167 followers. That’s close enough to 1,000,000 that it bothers us. Let’s all rally to help Hadfield hit that arbitrary number, and if you’re not already following him on Twitter then you’re using Twitter wrong.

(via Twitter)

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Last night was the finale of this season of Doctor Who and we’re now left wanting until the 50th Anniversary special airs on November 23rd. That’s going to be a long six months for fans of the show, but thankfully the BBC seems to be dribbling out bits of information about the 50th. They’ve even released some behind-the-scenes stuff like this clip of Matt Smith and David Tennant having a chat about what it’s like to be The Doctor.

Without spoiling anything if you haven’t seen last night’s episode yet, it sets up the 50th nicely, and gives us at least a basic idea of what it’s going to be about, and how Tennant’s Doctor winds up as part of the episode. As promised, we learn why Clara is “The Impossible Girl” and even see who John Hurt will be playing.

As a season finale it was kind of weak, but as a lead-in for the 50th anniversary it did it’s job nicely. That’s sort of how I feel about this season in general. Not great, but really has me excited for what’s coming. Besides, it will take more than a few luke-warm episodes of Who to get me to lose hope. We don’t walk away.

I do hope this is the last we see of that dumb leaf though.

(via Bleeding Cool, image via YouTube)

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During the Balkan wars in the 1990′s, an estimated 90,000 land mines were deployed in the region. They were mostly deployed at random without a map of their location, so finding them is a difficult and serious problem. To help find the remaining mines, Croatian professor Nikola Kezic and his team are training honeybees to sniff out explosives. 

Kezic and his work with bees is part of a larger project to detect land mines called “Tiramisu.” The program costs millions of euros and is sponsored by the EU, which Croatia will be joining officially this summer. When the EU adopts Croatia, it is also adopting its land mine problem, which includes about 466 square miles of suspected active minefields.

As it turns out, bees can easily detect the smell of explosives, and can be trained to seek it out. Kezic and his team of researchers set up various feeding sites for a colony of bees. Some of those sites contained a sugar solution mixed with TNT, and because bees favored the sugar solution over boring normal bee food, they also learned to recognize the smell of TNT and to associate it with the sugar. The idea being that if bees associate TNT with sweet delicious sugar, they’ll flock to land mines loaded with TNT because they will be fooled into thinking that’s a tasty treat.

There is one apparent problem says Kezic, “It is not a problem for a bee to learn the smell of an explosive, which it can then search. You can train a bee, but training their colony of thousands becomes a problem.” It could be some time before bees are used in the field.

Rats and dogs are also trained to detect land mines, but since they can set off the mines, it’s better to have bees trained to find them. American researchers have experimented with mine-seeking bees in the past, but their work did not involve TNT, which was commonly used during the Balkan wars. The smell of TNT evaporates quickly, and after a long time only traces of the smell remain making it difficult to detect. Luckily bees are super-good at smelling things.

If the experiment with TNT-hunting bees proves successful and reliable, then bees will be deployed to de-mined fields as a sort of double-check. Kelic said, “It has been scientifically proven that there are never zero mines on a de-mined field, and that’s where bees could come in.”

Once the bees are set loose on a de-mined field, they will be tracked with a heat-seeking camera. The belief being that they will congregate around the explosives.

I wonder how many bees would have to land on the same mine before it detonates.

(via Phys Org, image via Quisnovus)

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Okay, so, don’t freak out or anything, but Earth’s atmosphere is escaping. Ridiculously slowly, I should say, and there’s no concern that it’ll happen at any point soon. We’re talking billions of years before it’s gone. MinuteEarth breaks it all down in this handy video, but it’s pretty much a problem of our hydrogen and helium trying to get the heck out of here whenever they can.

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(Title pic via Reddit)

We don’t know a lot about the Google-built media player, other than the fact that Google made it, and it’s a media player, but the device’s FCC filing does reveal one interesting tidbit: The model number is H2G2-42. Yeah, you’re not seeing things, it’s absolutely a reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Someone has a sense of humor, or we’re getting a really awesome media player at some point.

When I say “we don’t know a lot about the Google-built media player,” I mean we literally know next to nothing else about it. The test report just says it functions as a media player, so take from that what you will. What is strange, however, is that it’s not built by any of Google’s normal partners for such things, but Google themselves.

It’s entirely possible that we’ll never actually see this out in the wild. It is, after all, just an FCC filing. Google’s no stranger to filing stuff and then shelving them. On the other hand, the Hitchhiker’s Guide reference could mean that it’s actually how Google views this player — a sort of all-knowing, ever-useful gadget. I won’t speculate further on the matter, but I’d love for that to be the case.

(FCC via TabletGuide.nl, Engadget)

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If you haven’t played Team Fortress 2, you should really go do that. The team-based shooter video game’s found a kind of longevity that publishers and developers that aren’t Valve dream about. TF2‘s received numerous updates over the years, dropped to being a free-to-play game, and even added a third faction of robotic enemies. Community-made items have appeared in various packs over time, but their latest update is the first that’s been 100% made by the community.

Titled Robotic Boogaloo, the update features a slew of robotic items and hats, because of course it has hats. Okay, well, the 57 items included in the update are reskinned versions of old hats, but that’s beside the point. The whole thing, including the comic and website hub, came from the community.

According to Jake “The Heartsman” Harold, one of the major folks behind the community push, they had a whole lot of leeway when it came to what they could do:

“We started off creating items before things were official, then when the update got picked up, we started working on the site, reworking the video, and making the comic,” he said. “The only brief we had from valve was ‘No promo remakes, limited time items or weapons.’ Other than that, we had near enough total freedom.”

Valve’s promised they’re not done creating updates of their own, however. “This doesn’t mark the end of Valve-produced TF2 updates, by the way,” says their official blog post. “As far as we’re concerned, there’s plenty of room for both to happily co-exist.”

(Team Fortress 2 via Polygon)

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If you weren’t already aware, the Sun’s been seeing a whole lot of action of late. Like, it’s still being the Sun, but it’s also putting out incredible X-class solar flares, complete with coronal mass ejections. The latter doesn’t necessarily require the former, though, and that’s where we find ourselves at currently. Thanks to a couple of coronal mass ejections yesterday, there’s a good chance we’re going to get some geomagnetic storm activity over the next few days.

Coronal mass ejections can send “billions of tons of solar particles” out from the Sun into space, and sometimes these are directed at Earth. This doesn’t affect humans, thanks to our atmosphere, but it can cause issues with technical equipment. This is especially true for anything in the path of the CME out in space, like satellites.

The first CME, which erupted from the Sun at 5:24 AM EDT on May 17th, has already come and gone without much fanfare. A second CME that erupted around 10 AM EDT yesterday, however, is expected to hit the Earth tomorrow, May 19th, and bump us up into what the Space Weather Prediction Center calls a “Geomagnetic Storm category G2 (Moderate)” level of activity.

What does that mean for us down on the ground? Some “high-latitude power systems may experience voltage alarms” and “long-duration storms may cause transformer damage,” but not a whole lot of possible interruptions for the majority of us. There is a good chance we’ll get an awful impressive aurora showing out of it, though.

(via NASA, Space Weather Prediction Center)

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Hollywood and the film industry at large are notoriously wary of spilling the beans about, well, anything. They’d rather not confirm anything. Teasing up until the very last minute is more their style, as everyone that follows entertainment news is well aware. The further away from release, the more likely this kind of winking is to happen. These guidelines apparently do not apply to Joss Whedon.

Speaking with IGN at ABC’s upfront event, Whedon was asked specifically whether the brother/sister duo he’d previously mentioned were, in fact, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. Because he’s Joss Whedon, he went ahead and both confirmed the two as well as gave some insight into why they’re being included:

You know, they had a rough beginning. They’re interesting to me because they sort of represent the part of the world that wouldn’t necessarily agree with The Avengers. So they’re not there to make things easier. I’m not putting any characters in the movie that will make things easier.

So, yeah. There you have it. This could all change between now and the actual release of Avengers 2, but as of right now, we’ve got ourselves some mutants. Well, maybe. There’s a good chance their background will be altered slightly, or just not mentioned, in order to not conflict with the ongoing X-Men movie franchise.

(IGN via MTV Splash Page, The Mary Sue)

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One of the issues that people have with J.J. Abrams on both Star Wars and Star Trek is the idea that he’s going to end up confusing the two somehow. What, exactly, does that mean? It’s hard to say, but Official Comedy’s taken a stab at what they think must be going on with J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek Wars.

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In a move that’s going to have them receiving curses from a very vocal minority of people, Nintendo’s now going to profit from user-generated videos that people upload to YouTube. As in, all those really sweet Let’s Play videos that people upload to show off their wicked skills? Yeah, Nintendo’s going to get the whole pie on that, not just a slice.

Essentially, Nintendo’s been issuing content ID matches to various videos of a certain length. This means that they get all the advertising off of that video. To be clear, this is totally within the company’s rights: Just because you bought a game does not necessarily mean you purchased broadcast rights, but that’s a whole different can of worms. Point is, they can do this, but the murkier question is whether they really should.

Here’s what Nintendo had to say on the matter, according to BBC News:

In a statement, the firm said the move was part of an “on-going push to ensure Nintendo content is shared across social media”.

“We continually want our fans to enjoy sharing Nintendo content on YouTube,” the company added.

“That is why, unlike other entertainment companies, we have chosen not to block people using our intellectual property.”

So…you’re somehow doing this people a service by gobbling up any revenue from these videos, which the users made, simply because it includes your intellectual property? Not cool, Nintendo. Not. Cool.

(via BBC, image via FaruSantos)

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1. How to secretly change your relationship status on Facebook (GeekSugar)
2. Once again, the Internet falls for Daily Currant parody article (Mediaite)
3. Don’t be that guy who trips on stage at graduation (Guy Code Blog)
4. Say so long to Warehouse 13 (The Mary Sue)
5. The 10 best sitcom finales in TV history (Flavorwire)
6. Girl throws first pitch, is surprised to find her father’s the catcher (SportsGrid)
7. This severed Barbie head has more Instagram followers than you (The Daily Dot)

(Title pic via Reddit)

Batman: Arkham Origins is set to launch October 25th, 2013, and this recently dropped teaser shows off some impressive CG, a grizzled Batman, and a really, really cool take on Deathstroke. Between you and me, Deathstroke’s definitely in my top five when it comes to DC, so I’m pretty excited that he’s been getting a lot of love lately. Young Justice, Arrow, and even his own ongoing for a bit there in the New 52 come to mind. This teaser him battling with a younger Batman is just gravy.

This isn’t gameplay, mind, but consider me cautiously optimistic.

(via The Mary Sue)

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It wouldn’t be an inaccurate statement to say that the prospect of a Zombieland show over at Amazon initially piqued the interest of pretty much everyone here. Like, the movie, but a show? Sign us up! Or so we once foolishly thought. That was before the pilot dropped and shattered every dream we had about seeing Columbus and the gang in a new series. Amazon Studios apparently agreed, as they’ve officially passed on the show.

How bad was it? Well, I can’t exactly speak for the rest of the Internet, but it definitely came across as pretty flipping awful. Pilots are basically meant to sell a series, and the one for Zombieland instead made me feel bad for liking the movie so much. Like, real bad.

Rhett Reese, part of the creative team from the movie and pilot, isn’t exactly thrilled at this development:

Our Zombieland series will not be moving forward on Amazon.Sad for everyone involved.

— Rhett Reese (@RhettReese) May 17, 2013

I’ll never understand the vehement hate the pilot received from die-hard Zombieland fans.You guys successfully hated it out of existence.

— Rhett Reese (@RhettReese) May 17, 2013

The Internet might have hated this out of existence, but it’s not like the pilot gave us a whole lot to work with. You’re already immediately losing points for not being able to bring back the original cast. While this is a totally understandable move — those actors doing a series like this isn’t easy to coordinate — the response should have been expected. Because of this, the rest of the pilot needed to be spectacular.

It was not.

(@RhettReese via Nerd Bastards)

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Apparently, today is the day that I share with the Internet my deep and abiding love of the 1971 Steven Spielberg movie Duel. Based on a Richard Matheson short story, Duel is a simple, bare bones flick — okay, fine, it is arguably a 90-minute long car chase scene — that is as gripping as movies come, pitting an everyman travelling salesman against a killer tanker truck that by all rights should have a higher place in the pantheon of menacing movie villains.

As Dennis Weaver’s salesman is harassed, chased, banged around, and nearly killed by the Darth Vader of big rigs, there is some truly dangerous driving on display at every turn. This, of course, is why it works so well when our buddies over at Slacktory recut the movie, replacing most of the audio with that of a driver’s ed filmstrip from 1949. The result is pure genius, as well as a great way to watch pretty much all the important parts of Duel in just under four minutes. 

(via Slacktory)

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Summer is on its way, which means it’s just about time to start converting your sick leave into three day weekends for the coming months. How to make sure your boss doesn’t call your bluff, though? Well, today brings us a small good thing — a veritable litany of excuses not to use when taking a sick day. A British healthcare provider’s survey of 1,000 employers and 1,000 employees has turned up some of the world’s lamest excuses for not being able to come into work, including gems like “My fish is sick” and the just-vague-enough-to-be-troubling “I’ve injured myself during sex.” 

Here are some more of our favorite excuses from the survey conducted by Benenden Health.

My dog has had a big fright and I don’t want to leave him

I am hallucinating

My new girlfriend bit me in a delicate place

I drank too much and fell asleep on someone’s floor – I don’t know where I am

I’ve had a hair dye disaster

I’ve been bitten by an insect

I’ve injured myself during sex

Of course, the study offered some helpful hints for those of you looking to make the most of the summer by calling in sick. For examples, the employers surveyed said they were less likely to question a sick day if it involved some sort of intestinal distress, because really, who wants to go into detail on that. (Notably, I assume the same principle would apply for the “I’ve injured myself during sex” excuse) This point confirms once and for all that calling in sick with anything but “food poisoning” or something along the same lines is a fool’s errand. If you make that rookie mistake, you deserve whatever fate befalls you.

Especially if you go with the “my dog has had a big fright” line. The only thing sadder than that being an excuse is it being a real reason you need to stay home.

(via The Telegraph, image via flickr)

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I’m a big fan of “The Elements” by Tom Lehrer. You might not know the name, though you really should, but you’ve likely heard the song at some point. It’s literally just Lehrer singing the elements on the periodic table while playing the piano. It’s great, and no other song about the periodic table has ever come close to dislodging it from the cockles of my heart. Enter AsapSCIENCE’s new periodic table song.

Lehrer fiddled with the order of the elements to conform to the meter of the tune, but AsapSCIENCE has gone and done the whole thing in order. They’ve even included the elements that were named after Lehrer’s song came out in 1959, so it’s more accurate for the modern day. Check it out:

Also, here’s Lehrer’s song for comparison:

And it wouldn’t be right of us to not include an Animaniacs song here, since AsapSCIENCE’s song so clearly owes a debt to the show:

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With all the hubbub surrounding the landing of the Curiosity rover, folks tend to forget that it’s not the only device operating on the planet. The Opportunity rover’s still kicking up there, for example, and it’s hauling butt to get the job done. It’s been hauling so much butt, in fact, that on Thursday it broke NASA’s 40-year-old record for total distance traveled on a world other than Earth.

That record, until this week, was held by the Apollo 17 Lunar Roving Vehicle. According to JPL, astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt drove their buggy a total of “22.210 statute miles or 35.744 kilometers” in 1972. That’s a pretty significant distance, and it’s taken Opportunity nine years to break it.

Specifically, they received transmission that Opportunity had moved a further 263 feet. That may not seem like much, but it’s part of a push from an area the rover’s been working in since 2011. That 263 feet pushed the rover’s total distance since landing in January of 2004 to 22.220 statute miles — 35.760 kilometers. It’s going to keep going, so it certainly seems like the little rover will hold the record for some time.

It’s also worth noting that this is just NASA’s record. Soviet Union’s Lunokhod 2 holds the international record of 23 miles — 37 kilometers — from its Moon excursion in 1973.

(via NASA, image courtesy of NASA/JPL)

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If you’re not great at doing math in your head, you’re in pretty good company around these parts. In general, too — an estimated 20% of otherwise healthy adults regularly struggle to do basic arithmetic without showing their work. Don’t give up hope, though! A new treatment being studied at Oxford University could make you better at doing math in your head for up to six months at a time — and all you have to do is put on what looks like a steampunk gimp mask and let someone deliver electrical shocks to your brain!

Don’t worry, though — the shocks aren’t strong or painful, producing at their strongest just a tiny fraction of the power of one AA battery. Subjects in the study, led by Oxford’s Roi Cohen Kadosh, were given math questions while being subjected to either real or fake electrical shocks that fluctuated in power. The study kept the shocks going for five days, during which the 25 test subjects also received mathematics lessons. While the two groups started off equally skilled, by the end of five days of training and shock therapy, the subjects who were being jolted were two to five times faster at processing their lessons, and better at retaining them, too.

The results seemed to stick, too. After six months, researchers called the subjects in for a second study in which the previously shocked participants remained about one third faster than their colleagues in the control group. Brain images taken during the study show the brains of subjects in the experimental and control groups even looked different.

It’s not yet understood how the therapy improves math skills, though researchers hypothesize the short, sharp shocks may help to synchronize neuron firing and thus improve performance. Further research will show if the therapy can translate to broader benefits. In the meantime, though, the team behind the work urged people not to shock their brains on their own, no matter how bad they are at math.

More sage advice we’ve never heard.

(via Science, image courtesy of Roi Cohen Kadosh)

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