geekosystem

Marc Maron hosts one of the best podcasts on the Internet, WTF with Marc Maron, and now he's hoping to parlay some of that success into the world of television with a new show on IFC. It premieres this Friday night, but because waiting for things is the worst they've put the first episode up online already. Check it out right here.

Here's some nightmare fuel you could have gone the rest of your life without knowing: every continent except Antarctica hosts spiders so large, they can trap bats in their webs. That's according to a study released earlier this month in the open-access journal PLOS ONE that records in often gruesome detail 50 incidents of spiders ensnaring bats. In related news, who is moving to Antarctica with me right the hell now?

Sometimes, a thing is exactly the weird thing it sounds like, and it just makes us incredibly happy.  There's nothing particularly complicated about hallway swimming -- all you seem to need is a reasonable degree of physical fitness and a freshly waxed floor. It's not high art by any means, but not everything has to be. This looks like the most fun you can have making your head spin that doesn't involve a bottle of something that could strip paint, and there's something very sublime and soothing about it, though I can't quite put my finger on what.

I think we can all agree on something: Sex and finding ways to stay alive longer are two things that most people spend a lot of time thinking about. Doctors of all stripes have been finding ways of connecting sexual activity to mental and physical health for years, so the idea that they're linked isn't crazy.  You know what is a little crazy, though? The idea that, like everything else in life, robots will eventually do a better job of using sex to make people live longer, healthier lives than people. According to the Center of Transhumanity, however, that's exactly what's going to happen.

If you're planning to do any outdoor activities this weekend, make sure you keep an eye out for signs of hurricanes and fish falling out of the sky. Yes, that's right folks: There are sharks falling of the sky, and there's nothing we can do about it... Ok, so it was actually just one shark: It fell onto on a golf course in California. It may only be one shark right now, but this could be the first sign of a falling fish epidemic the likes of which we've never seen!

Soccer (or football, if you prefer) a global pastime. It only makes sense that, over time, different parts of the world come up with different variations on the game, whether in the form of a new set of rules or maybe -- why the hell are those kids kicking a flaming coconut?!

The world of internet piracy and online copyright enforcement is rife with stories of incompetence, especially on the side of major corporations and copyright holders. Many of those problems stem from the fact that the most frequently used weapon of copyright-holders, sending DMCA takedown requests to remove sites illegally sharing copyrighted material from search engines, is automated. The systems in place send an obscene number of notices, including duplicate requests for sites that have already been removed and now, apparently, random requests to remove any site even slightly connected to a company's copyrighted material. For example, a recent rash of DMCA notices from Microsoft asked Google to delist a series of popular, most-likely non-infringing sites, including TechCrunch, The Huffington Post, BBC.com, and Wikipedia.

Environmentalists want people to reduce their carbon footprints, compost, and do absolutely anything that might be able to reduce the effects of global warming. I'm not saying the environment isn't important, but the battle against convenience will inevitably be a losing one. Luckily for us, scientists from Scotland may have found a way to prevent the sun from melting us alive without asking the average person to stop driving their car. Researchers at the University of Strathclyde think the best way to reduce the sun's impact on the planet is to block some of its rays with a giant cloud of asteroid dust.

Here at Geekosystem, we've pointed out the annoying tendencies of die-hard Apple fans before, but today's video turns down a darker, more disturbing path. So the iPhone 5 has been announced, and the Apple lovers across the globe are collectively trying to avoid peeing themselves while they wait for the phone to go on sale next Friday, September 21st.

A group of U.S. soldiers who formed a para-military group planning to perform terrorist acts as a means of inciting hypervigilance and rallying support for the military were apparently inspired by Rainbow Six: Patriots, according to a prosecutor trying members of the group for murder.

A little after midnight, the peaceful inhabitants of Nashville, Tennessee were kicking back, watching Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on WSMV-TV, Channel 4 News. Cue the weather forecast. Looks like it's gonna be a hell of a storm. We do not know who that thing is, or what happened to its teeth, so if you know, drop us a line and let us know that it won't be raining demons somewhere in the world.

It looks like someone tore a baby apart and wrapped it around an assault rifle. The blood bag could mean it is still alive. The leash could mean it tried to escape. We have so many questions, but no one seems to have the answers.

Sasha Kennedy of Essex is addicted to water, drinking 25 liters of the stuff a day, far exceeding the USDA Recommended Daily Water Intake of  2.7 liters. Her condition provokes many pressing questions, namely "Won't that dilute her blood?" and "Has she ever tried soda?"

What surprised me most was that the condition had a name: Psychogenic polydipsia. It is "an uncommon clinical disorder characterized by excessive water-drinking in the absence of a physiologic stimulus to drink" and is typically found among mental patients on phenothiazine medications. Kennedy appears to be completely sane, although she does experience the dry mouth sensation characteristic of the condition.

Today in things you couldn't possibly make up: The Washington Post reports that the CIA has launched an internal task force to evaluate the fallout from WikiLeaks' massive dump of U.S. diplomatic cables. Oh, and within CIA headquarters, the WikiLeaks Task Force is "mainly known by its all-too-apt acronym: W.T.F." Washington Post:

The irreverence is perhaps understandable for an agency that has been relatively unscathed by WikiLeaks. Only a handful of CIA files have surfaced on the WikiLeaks Web site, and records from other agencies posted online reveal remarkably little about CIA employees or operations. Even so, CIA officials said the agency is conducting an extensive inventory of the classified information, which is routinely distributed on a dozen or more networks that connect agency employees around the world.

To adapt a line from a Boing Boing reader, does this make them the men in the black ROFLcopters? (Washington Post via Boing Boing)