The more hippie dippie meditation courses always feature lots of appropriated Asian philosophy, imagery and music, which doesn't really speak to the modern Western mind and is therefore lost on many of us.

So if you want to get a city dwelling English speaker interested in meditation you've got to learn to speak their language, and Jason Headley has cracked the code with his series F*ck That: An Honest Meditation.

Jason's meditation video, book and app use the many expletives other meditation courses are afraid to let fly in order to free our spirits from the grips of our modern lives, or some such bulls#@t.

Some claim it worked wonders for their frustrated minds, others say it sounds like an early Eddie Murphy routine. Click play, close your eyes and decide for yourself. (NSFW) Namaste!

(YouTube Link)

-Via Laughing Squid

Two young boys, Noah and Stephen Ursrey, were caught in a dangerous riptide off the beach in Panama City, Florida, on Saturday. Several beachgoers went out to retrieve them and were also caught by the current. Four members of the boys' family also went out and were unable to return. Other beachgoers took things into their own hands and formed a human chain of around 80 people to reach the stranded swimmers. Jessica Simmons and her husband Derek swam out to the end of the chain to reach the Ursrey family and the others.   

As Simmons paddled, the human chain grew, with 80 people stretching over 100 yards out to the distressed swimmers. Some of them couldn’t swim, Simmons said, but wanted to help and stayed in the shallows. Others stood in water up to their necks, waiting for Simmons and her husband to cover the last few feet so they could pass the swimmers to shore.

“I got to the end, and I know I’m a really good swimmer,” Simmons said. “I practically lived in a pool. I knew I could get out there and get to them.”

What Simmons found at the end of the human chain, she said, was shocking. Ursrey’s mother was exhausted, her eyes were rolling back and Simmons remembered her “drinking so much water” and “telling us to just let her go and save us.” Everyone was exhausted, the waves knocking them under. One by one, starting with the children, Simmons and her husband, along with a few other rescuers, towed the swimmers to the human chain, who then pulled them all to shore.

All ten people were pulled out of the water, and the human chain retreated together. Barbara Ursrey, the boys' grandmother, suffered a heart attack and was taken to a hospital where she is recovering.

A third-party seller on Amazon recently thought they stumbled across a brilliant idea to come up with new cellphone cover designs in practically no time by using an AI program to generate designed based on popular image searches. Unfortunately, the bot's programing somehow went wrong and it started getting increasingly focused on strange medical terms. 

The bot created thousands of designs and many of them were hilariously wrong like the ones seen here. Unfortunately, Amazon has since pulled the listings, but you can still see many of the best images over on IFL Science.

Personally, I think they should bring them back, I mean, where else will you be able to find a cell phone cover depicting vaginal discomfort?

See the rest of the absurd images here.

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

John Travolta was the studio's original choice to play the title character in the 1994 movie Forrest Gump. Travolta declined and the role was next offered to both Bill Murray and Chevy Chase, both of whom also said no. Sean Penn claims he was Paramount's second choice after Travolta; he said no, too. Paramount soon had to "settle for" Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks to take over the lead. Hanks decided to accept the role after reading the script for a hour and half, on the condition that the film be historically accurate.

The female lead role of Jenny, Forrest's love interest, was offered to Jodie Foster, Nicole Kidman and Demi Moore, each of whom gave it a thumbs down. The lesser-known Robin Wright finally was decided upon to play Forrest's "best girl."

The director's hat was offered to both Terry Gilliam, who turned it down, and Barry Sonnefeld, who was interested, but chose to go with directing Addams Family Values instead. In their wake, Robert Zemeckis took over the director's helm.

Both Ice-T and Dave Chappelle were similarly offered the role of Forrest's best pal, "Bubba" Buford. Ice-T didn't want to play a  character with a disability and Chappelle, who later regretted his decision, "figured the movie would bomb." And one sort of sees Chappelle's reasoning, after all, one would logically assume that a movie starting out with so many turn-downs and rejected offers wouldn't fare all that well at the box office.

Robert Recorde was a polymath Welshman born in 1510. He became a university professor, then a physician, then a finance man running the mint. He wrote textbooks on astronomy, geometry, theology, and arithmetic. He wrote those textbooks in English, which made his knowledge available for the first time to scholar who didn't read Latin. But what Recorde did that was the most lasting contribution was that he invented the = sign.

Recorde's symbol didn't catch on at first. The language of Latin still held sway during the 16th century. Latin had a word for the concept, "aequalis," and if more concision was necessary, people could shorten it to "ae" or "oe." But aiding the popularity of the equals sign was Recorde's introduction, to English-speakers, of the German symbols "+" and "-". In combination, these signs allowed people to express, quickly and with a minimum of wasted ink, a mathematical equation in symbols. Instead of writing, "A factore added to a quantitie of thryeye is equalle to a dyffyrynte factore frome whyche is takene awaye a quantitie of foure," a mathematician could write: "x + 3 = y - 4".

That opened the door for math to have its own language, understandable by people all over the world. Read about the remarkable Recorde and his legacy at Ars Technica. -via Digg

Did you know that Planet of the Apes was originally a French novel published in 1963? And that Rod Serling added the twist ending? I was nine years old when Planet of the Apes came out in 1968, so these are things I did not know at all. But I was lucky enough to see it without knowing the ending.

(YouTube link)

The ninth movie with Planet of the Apes in the title will be out this weekend, so it's time to a look back at the many movies, TV shows, books, comic books, and more that take place on the Planet of the Apes. For an even more in-depth look at the first five films, check out an article at the A.V. Club. -Thanks, Blake!  

In the Cretaceous period, a landslide in South Dakota buried a lot of cycad plants. They eventually turned to silicate fossils, and gradually, erosion brought them back to the surface of the earth. As the American West was settled, people found them and thought they were pretty neat. One of those people was George Reber Wieland, who was so impressed with the fossil cycad he found in 1898 that he changed his career from paleontology to paleobotany to study the fossils. He spent years working to protect the South Dakota site, until Fossil Cycad National Monument was declared in 1922.

Unfortunately for Fossil Cycad, its official recognition as an American landmark came at a difficult time for the country overall. “It was a period of economic hardship,” says Santucci. “Fossil Cycad wasn’t really developed like other national parks and monuments were.” That meant no one was hired to watch over the land. While the superintendent of nearby Wind Cave National Park was put in charge of its overall management, “day-to-day surveillance was entrusted to local ranchers,” writes Santucci. The site’s only sign—a 15-inch carved wooden plank—abbreviated both “National” and “Monument,” but made sure to spell out “NO PROSPECTING.”

Despite this lack of amenities, tourists continued to swing by, and to take pieces of the monument home with them. “People reading in newspapers about the monument in the Black Hills would come,” says Santucci. Natural erosion meant that new layers of fossils were gradually exposed, creating more buzz and more foot traffic. Such was the Fossil Cycad catch-22: when there weren’t any visible fossils, it wasn’t much of a monument. But whenever there were enough to attract visitors, those same visitors meant they were quick to disappear.

And that is why you've never heard of Fossil Cycad National Monument. Read about the life and death of the national park at Atlas Obscura.

When your occupation is selling deadly weapons in bulk, you can end up dealing with some pretty shady characters. Do you trust your customers? Maybe, maybe not, but business is business.

(YouTube link)

See, when you have an ulterior motive, you can't assume that the people, or things, you are dealing with don't also have their own ulterior motives. Good Business is a science fiction short that's shorter than the video indicates, by Ray Sullivan. -via Boing Boing

Fortune cookies are fine when they're filled with broad predictions, generic advice and lottery numbers, and I also really enjoy fortunes that teach me simple Chinese words.

But I'll be damned if I'm gonna let a cookie use a slip of paper to blackmail or intimidate me, because fortunes are flammable and cookies have a way of disappearing, leaving but a few crumbs behind.

Think fortune cookies would never reveal your deepest, darkest secrets? This Rock Paper Cynic comic seems to indicate otherwise, and as cookies get smarter their fortunes look for ways to make another kind of fortune...

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

Diddly Doodly by Firebeard

It's hard to say what made old Neddy snap on that hot August day, but after the day of the Diddly Doodly nothing would ever be the same. It seems Flanders had been suppressing quite a bit of anger, much of it due to living next door to Homer Simpson, and without a release that bottled up anger made his holy roller cork pop- and he went totally psycho. Nobody in Springfield was safe from a bible thumping, and yet nobody could figure out who was murdering people in town, that is, until Bart saw Ned throwing away a sheet covered in blood...

Show the world what happens when an uptight neighbor loses their mind with this Diddly Doodly t-shirt by Firebeard, it's a bloody funny way to make your fellow Simpsons fans smile wherever you go!

Visit Firebeard's Facebook fan page, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more dark and geeky designs:

The Sidening	The Facefather	The Sweer SnuSnu	Beatlebusters

View more designs by Firebeard | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

Do you hate snakes as much as the average person? Do you get a chill even when you see one in a movie? You're in for some chills, then, when you check out a collection of videos from movies you've probably seen, with snakes taking center stage for at least a portion of the film. The scene pictured above is a given; find out what the the rest of them are at TVOM.

Shot-for-shot remakes are often the most boring kind of remake, because fans try so hard to actually remake the original film they lose sight of what makes a remake fun, namely originality and a sense of humor.

When fan filmmaker Tim Hoekstra and his buddies created this shot-for-shot remake of Star Wars: Episode III- Revenge Of The Sith they put effort in to making sure the dialog and the shots were just right- and that's about it.

(YouTube Link)

-Via io9

What if Hollywood movies were created by artificial intelligence? There's no chance of that just yet, as the technology hasn't reached that level. As artificial intelligence works right now, the concept would be like feeding something through a language translator too many times. But you can see what a machine might come up with, with the AI Movie Poster Generator.

The titles and the tag lines were created by a neural network. They were fed into a generator which randomly assigns them to movie poster images and movie stars, so the combinations often make no sense at all. Which is okay, because the titles and tag lines rarely make any sense, either. If you generate one you particularly like, there's a button to the side to save or share the URL. -via Metafilter

People are constantly posting and sharing pictures of cute animals online, and there's a whole subreddit dedicated to sharing adorable animal pictures for people to "awwww!" at appropriately titled /r/aww.

But can any of us really claim to know exactly where each and every one of those animal pics on /r/aww came from?

According to John Savoia, founder of the Facebook group Dogspotting, many pics are being "stolen" from his Facebook group and shared on /r/aww without proper credit, which is "an affront to the true spirit of Dogspotting":

"Reddit is built upon content aggregation and not on content creation," John Savoia, who's widely credited with creating the tongue-in-cheek sport of Dogspotting, told me via email. To Savoia, that some /r/aww users feel comfortable passing off other people's images as their own ranks as the lowest of the low. "Dogspotting is built on the concept that honor and satisfaction come from doing the work of spotting," he said. "These poor souls probably haven't seen a real dog in years."

"Dogspotting is nothing without the vibrant and amazing community of people who everyday put themselves out there to spot dogs," he added. "Across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram we want to show off the best of Dogspotting, not just the photos, but the people who bring that content to Dogspotting. Dogspotting is a lifestyle but it's also a community."

Read Reddit's /r/aww Is Full Of Stolen Dog Pics at Motherboard

Bright Side posted ten drawings that have something wrong -supposedly only one thing in each picture. Test your observational skills by figuring out each one, before you click on a picture to reveal the answer. Numbers 6 and 7 generate a lot of arguments, one because the answer doesn't hold up for everyone, the other because there are several things wrong with the picture. See them all here. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Disney Studios experienced a creative dry spell a while back that ceased production of their short films for decades and made fans long for the good old days of Disney cartoons.

But since Disney started making 2D shorts again they've been going at it full tilt, reimagining Mickey and the gang with a sketchy retro look that's classic enough to be classic and new enough to be new.

I'm truly torn on what I like best about Split Decision, but in the end I settled on how happy I am to see Donald allowed to truly quack up again like he used to in the good old days- he's my anger hero!

(YouTube Link)

July 11 marks twenty years since the release of the movie Contact. Based on the bestselling novel by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, the story follows Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) as she searches for evidence of intelligent life in radio signals from the cosmos. The movie was a long time in the making.

Sagan and his wife, Ann Druyan, originally envisioned Contact as a feature film. In 1980, they co-wrote the project’s first treatment. Frustrated with Hollywood’s glacial development process, the couple eventually chose to turn their story into a novel. Sagan hadn’t even begun working on the book when Simon & Schuster gave him a whopping $2 million advance for it. An instant hit, Contact sold almost 1.75 million copies within two years of its 1985 release. Sadly, we’ll never know what Sagan thought of Warner Bros.’ subsequent movie adaptation as he passed away several months before its release.

That's one thing. You'll learn nine other interesting facts about Contact in a list at Mental Floss.  

My mother-in-law gave my two-year-old a toy electric guitar for Christmas. All you had to do is touch it to make random heavy metal riffs pierce the air. I was lucky it ran on batteries, because batteries can be removed as soon as Grandma turns her back.

When you have a child, your parents are very likely to shower them with gifts that make noise. You generously consider that maybe they don't know any better. In most families, you would be mistaken. They know full well what they are doing, and it is part of their revenge for the grief you caused them when you were a kid. This is the latest from Lunarbaboon.

(Image via Jen Carlson)

It's hard to really enjoy artwork every day of our lives when we're so busy with our daily routines, but a new program from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art invites you to interact with art in a quick, easy and fascinating way. With the "Send Me" feature, you simply send a text to 572-51 saying "send me [x]" and they will reply with a piece of art that depicts that subject. Even if you go to the museum on a regular basis, you're still likely to get back artwork you've never seen as only 5% of their collection is ever on display at a time.

Not every topic will get a result though. I tried "send me a racoon" and was told they didn't have anything in the collection matching it. Even so, most subjects will work.

Via Gothamist

The Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department in New Mexico responded to an emergency call Sunday night that was placed by a home assistant device, believed to be Amazon Echo's Alexa. A crisis negotiation team and a SWAT team were also sent to the home after the deputies assessed the situation.

Eduardo Barros was house-sitting with his girlfriend and her daughter Sunday night at a residence in Tijeras, some 15 miles east of Albuquerque. The couple got into an argument and the altercation became physical, according to the Bernalillo County Sheriff Department's spokesperson, Deputy Felicia Romero.

Barros allegedly wielded a firearm and threatened to kill his girlfriend, asking her: "Did you call the sheriffs?" A smart speaker, which was hooked up to a surround sound system inside the home, recognized that as a voice command and called 911, Romero said.

The woman, who suffered injuries, was traced from the home with her uninjured daughter. Barros was arrested after a standoff lasting several hours. Sheriff's officers were not sure what kind of device had called 911. Google doesn't support phone calls, and Amazon doesn't support calling 911. 

Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office can confirm the existence of a call because, Deputy Romero told us, the line was left open and, in addition to the fighting the victim can be overheard in the background saying, "Alexa, call 911," seemingly unaware that a call had already been made and that calling 911 isn't enabled on Amazon Echo devices.

We may never know exactly how (or if) Alexa made that call, but one thing is clear, the digital act may have saved someone's life.

-Thanks, hearsetrax!

(Image credit: FASTILY)

My Mean Teen-Killing Machine! by ClayGrahamArt

Childrens books have become a bit too dark for my taste, and it seems like no topic is too taboo anymore as long as the drawings are cute and kiddy. Take the latest release from Mamma Voorhees for instance- it talks about how her son loves to kill teen campers who visit Camp Crystal Lake, and how he runs around the woods like a maniac with a hockey mask and machete. This does not sound kid friendly to me, but after reading it I will say the book conveys a strong message about loyalty and obeying your parents, but it seems odd that Mama Voorhees would want to advertise the fact that her son is a murderer...maybe she's lost her head?!

This My Mean Teen Killing Machine t-shirt by ClayGrahamArt will make people laugh their heads off wherever you go, and you'll become known as a real cut-up!

Visit ClayGrahamArt's Facebook fan page, official website and Instagram, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more bloody good designs:

Bad Comedy	Team Rocket Pops (vintage)	The Legend of Fallout	THE MARTIANS ARE COMING TO SAVE THE EARTH

View more designs by ClayGrahamArt | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!

Research results for specialists
compiled by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Improbable Research staff

(Image credit: Flickr user Mike Kline)

In 1968 Anthony Doob and Alan Gross, of the University of Toronto and the University of Wisconsin, published a response-to-horn- honking study that triggered an expanded study, seven years later, by a team at the University of Utah.

Doob and Gross: Honking
"Status of Frustrator as an Inhibitor of Horn-Honking Responses," Anthony N. Doob and Alan Gross, Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 76, 1968, pp. 213--8. The authors explain:

One of two automobiles, a new luxury model or an older car, was driven up to a signal controlled intersection and stopped. The driver was instructed to remain stopped after the signal had changed to green until 15 seconds had elapsed, or until the driver of the car immediately behind honked his horn twice. Subjects were the 82 drivers, 26 women and 56 men, whose progress was blocked by the experimental car. The experiment was run from 10:30 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. on a Sunday, in order to avoid heavy weekday traffic....

(YouTube link)

This cat rarely lets a bottle cap get by! He was only seven months old when this video was recorded, but he's skilled at stopping them high or low. This kitty is laser-focused on his goal tending duties when the bottle caps start flying in a game a "Nyan hockey." You can see more of his games here. -via Laughing Squid

With the success of companies who invest in "sharing" goods and services like Airbnb, Uber, and the various metro bikes systems, the Chinese company Sharing E Umbrella set out to provide umbrellas to commuters when they need one. The company bought 300,000 umbrellas at 60 yuan each. Those who need an umbrella in one of 11 cities in China can use an app to put down a 19 yuan deposit and pay 50 jiao to use it for a half-hour. You can see where this is going. Why would someone buy their own umbrella for 60 yuan when you can get one for 19 yuan and some change?

While Sharing E Umbrella gave out their umbrellas at train and bus stops, they soon realized that getting users to return the umbrellas would be a problem. "Umbrellas are different from bicycles," Zhao said. "Bikes can be parked anywhere, but with an umbrella you need railings or a fence to hang it on."

The SCMP reports that Zhao concluded that the safest place for an umbrella would be at the customer's home, where it would be safe and undamaged. But, apparently, customers have skipped the final step of then returning the umbrellas, simply keeping them for themselves.

The result is that only a few weeks into the plan, the company has lost almost all of its umbrellas. In that, it has joined with two Chinese bike-sharing companies that had most of their bikes stolen. But Sharing E Umbrella CEO Zhao Shuping is not giving up. He says the company plans to buy 30 million more umbrellas. Read more of the story at Shanghaist. 

Comedian Joel Dommett performed at the 2016 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. He gave control of his confetti cannon to a guy in the front row, and told him to set it off at the appropriate time. The clip contains NSFW language.

(YouTube link)

That was the absolute worst time he could have set that cannon off. However, the joke Dommet manages to tell around it is funny. -via Tastefully Offensive

A ranked list of 100 things can be fun when you find your favorites on it, and enraging when you don't. A list of movie props could be just that, but this is much more. Every one of the 100 props that made the list has a story behind it. Where the idea came from, why they selected this object, how it was made, how it was used, what happened to it after the movie was wrapped -those kind of things are covered by the people who were involved in the movie for each prop. For example:

63. The eggs, Alien (1979)

Roger Christian, art director: "The eggs were made with grips underneath where you could pull and open them up. Everything in H.R. Giger's world is combined with female or male body parts, so the eggs had to look menacing and sensual at the same time. The membrane is a sheep's stomach -- I know, because I had to buy stuff from the abattoir all the time (or I'd get my buyers to go). To get that burst out, the only way to do it, Ridley [Scott] had to put on a rubber glove and put his hand up and chucked it out at the camera. That was the only way to get it to work. [The eggs] were heavy and there were only a few made practical. The rest were background ones, which they made a lot of."

 57. The cup of water, Jurassic Park (1993)

Michael Lantieri, special effects designer (in the Jurassic Park feature Making Prehistory): "I was at work and Steven [Spielberg] calls into the office. He goes, 'I'm in the car, I'm playing Earth, Wind & Fire, and my mirror is shaking. That's what we need to do. I want to shake the mirror and I want to do something with the water.' The mirror shaking was really very easy -- put a little vibrating motor in it that shook it. The water was a another story. It was very difficult thing to do. You couldn't do it. I had everyone working on it. Finally, messing around with a guitar one night, I set a glass and started playing notes on a guitar and got to a right frequency, a right note, and it did exactly what I wanted it to do."

Many of the stories are much longer. You can read them all at Thrillist. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Jason Hoffman/Thrillist)

Dog dancing totally makes sense to me, and cat dancing makes a strange sort of sense when you consider how cats cling to our neck and shoulders when they're scared, their claws in turn making us dance with pain.

I've also seen riders train their horses to dance, rearing up on their hind legs to chachacha, but dancing with horses is new to me and I'm loving every minute of it.

This video features one of the world's premiere trainers and horse dancers, Frédéric Pignon, showing off his beautiful and talented Frisian stallions.

(YouTube Link)

-Via World of Animals

In 15th-century Europe, hazing new students wasn't just a custom, it was mandatory and inflicted by the administration. The purpose was to rid new students of their "their pride, gluttony, and other sins." In other words, to take them down a notch. Only then were they deemed ready to learn. One of the worst hazing rituals took place in Germany in Sweden during the late 1400s. It was called Deposition, and applicants had to go through it before they were even admitted to the university.

Once everyone was ready, the Depositor passed around odd items with which the students needed to adorn themselves: hats, looking-glasses, saws, razors, combs, shears, and clothes “of various patterns and colors.” Fake horns and fake donkey ears were attached to their heads.

The Depositor also asked students to open wide—and he inserted a boar tusk on each side of their mouths. They were expected to hold the tusks in place for the duration of the ceremony. The Depositor then marched them down the hall into a cavernous lecture room—though calling it “marching” is generous. The Depositor, in reality, spurned them forward with a stick as if they were “a herd of oxen or asses.”

Oh, that's just the beginning. The rituals that followed were designed to frighten and humiliate the students, and eliminate those who weren't truly dedicated to their education. Read what happened during the rest of Deposition at Atlas Obscura.

Foxes must possess some sort of magical powers because so many different cultures feature magical foxes in their mythology that it cannot be a coincidence.

The Japanese are especially sweet on foxes, which is why they figure prominently in both Japanese myths and their pop culture, because who doesn't love to see a cute little fox character in a cartoon, comic or video game?

This particular cartoon is called Kagemono but it wasn't made in Japan- it was animated by Sabrina Cotugno back in 2012, when she was a student at CalArts. Kagemono is truly a mini masterpiece, so tune in and fox out.

(YouTube Link)

One of the things that makes us human is the ability to find a reason, or an excuse, to do what we wanted to do in the first place. We can rationalize any decision if we try hard enough. See, if she needed the sink for something she really wanted to do, she'd find a way to clear the glass out of it. Glass shards don't become invisible just because they're wet, and even if they did, you have a hair dryer around somewhere. But as it is, she's not going to get any argument from her husband, who clearly prefers pizza over salad and dishwashing. The is the latest comic from MegaCynics.