Bread at its most basic is made with flour, water, yeast and salt, and once you've made bread a few times you can easily identify the proper consistency and add more flour or water as needed.

But making bread from scratch without a recipe, and with little to no prior baking experience, sounds like a recipe for disaster, so can The Try Guys make an edible loaf of bread when left to their own devices in BuzzFeed's Tasty Kitchen?

It's like the Great American Bake-Off only with less impressive results and with way more alcohol! (NSFW Language)

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(Photo: Kate Monkey)

Researchers tested the attention spans of 2,000 people in Canada. They found that their ability to focus on one thing had dropped from 12 seconds to 8 since the year 2000. As goldfish are thought to have an attention span of 9 seconds, this puts us humans a step below them.

The researchers suggested that the practice of constantly reading and using smartphones and other electronic devices has impaired this ability. But the Daily Telegraph explains that this finding more likely reflects a general trend in technological interest:

Bruce Morton, a researcher with the University of Western Ontario's Brain and Mind Institute, suggested it is the result of humans craving information.

"When we first invented the car, it was so novel," he said.

"The thought of having an entertainment device in the car was ridiculous because the car itself was the entertainment.

"After a while, travelling for eight hours at a time, you'd had enough of it. The brain is bored. You put radios in the car and video displays.

"Why? Because after the first 10 minutes of the drive I've had enough already. I understand this.

"Just because we may be allocating our attention differently as a function of the technologies we may be using, it doesn't mean that the way our attention actually can function has changed."

-via The Presurfer

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Yukie Ota is a Japanese flutist who is trying to break into the music business. Her big chance came at the Carl Nielsen International Flute Competition in Odense, Denmark. During the first round of the competition, Ota's performance was going well.

Then a butterfly landed on her face and crawled around.

Ota briefly glanced up at it, but never dropped a note. She passed the first round of the competition.

NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas dug up some information about the butterfly:

I asked Dr. Bob Robbins, curator of lepidoptera at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, what the butterfly was doing there. Was it attracted by the lights? Something on her skin? Just the fluttery sound of her flute?

After taking a look at the video, Robbins told me that this was an Aglais io, or a Peacock butterfly, which is a very common species in Europe. He noted that it is "very weird" for a butterfly to come indoors like this, and that when butterflies land on people, it's usually because they are looking for salty water to drink.

"If you look closely at the video," he says, "you can see the butterfly's proboscis — its 'tongue' — out as it crawls across her forehead. It's looking for her perspiration. And she's under lights at a highfalutin competition. I'd be sweating a bit under that pressure."

-via The Presurfer

Zomato, a website targeted at foodies, created these illustrations to promote themselves. In certain situations, most personalities are either A or B, where A and B represent ways and means of food consumption. Which one are you? Are you ever both? In my case, ketchup *and* mustard on my burger, please. See more examples of gastronomical dichotomies here.

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A woman on a motorcycle rides around in Russia dispensing karma to those who litter the streets. She may not be the superhero Russia deserves, but she is the one it needs. Really, how hard is it to put your garbage in a drive-through bin?

Many folks are calling this staged. So what if it is? It makes a great public service announcement, although Russian commenters have not seen it on TV …yet. I actually hope that it is staged, because this kind of behavior would eventually lead to someone shooting her. And that's a video we don't want to see.  -via reddit

(Photo: Lort Smith)

George is a 10-year old goldfish that lives in Australia. He had a brain tumor that was gradually impairing his health. So his owner, Pip Joyce, paid a veterinarian at the Lort Smith Animal Hospital in Melbourne to surgically remove it.

(Photo: Lort Smith)

This was a challenging operation that required George to be placed under anesthesia. The veterinary staff pumped water into his gills to keep him breathing during the 45-minute operation. It was a complete success and George has now returned to his home pond where he lives with 20 other goldfish. There's every reason to think that he will continue to live another 20 years.

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-via Huffington Post

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Paul Smith has suffered from cerebral palsy since birth. Simple things that most folks take for granted, such as holding a brush or a writing utensil, aren't within the realm of possibility for him. Yet Mr. Smith did not let a disability stifle his spirit and desire to create art. As a young man, Smith began to "paint" with a typewriter. Using only ten symbol keys, Smith creates the impressive works of art shown in this video. Paul Smith may be confined to a nursing home in Oregon, but he has the power to inspire people all over the world with his talents, gracious demeanor and perseverance in the face of hardship. Via Lost at E Minor.

If you do not own a record player, it should be known that you are not hearing music right. Don't get me wrong, there are the over-hyped, celebrity, DJ headpones, and there are high quality digital recordings you can get. But people who grew up listening to a record player know, that is just the greatest way to listen to music. Maybe not technically,  but from a nostalgia stand point it wins, hands down.

The record player also has some really cool features, too. Like being able to slow down the music you listen to. While in most cases, slowed down music just sounds like, well, slowed down music, in the case of Dolly Parton's "Jolene," something extraordinary happens. It is like the song transforms and is suddenly sung perfectly, just  a bit more depressing and with a guy's voice instead.

Check it out yourself.

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A song about heartbreak suddenly takes on an even more somber tone. I will even go so far as to say I am not a fan of the original, but the slowed down de-make (seems a fitting word) really works for me. See, you can't do THAT on modern machinery.

Oh wait, you can? Man, I gotta leave the house more.

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The arrow seen here appears to reverse due to refracted light. The light must travel through the air, glass, water, back of the glass and again through the air before landing on the arrow. When light passes from one material into another, it is refracted. The arrow appears to reverse itself because the glass of water acts as a magnifying glass. When light shines through a magnifying glass, it bends toward the center. The point in which the light appears to join together is the focal point. Past the focal point, the image appears to reverse, because the bent light rays pass each other. The light on the right side is now on the left and vice versa, thus the arrow appears reversed. Via Science Dump.

Redditor ejara80 writes that this costume worn by his friend's dog won third place at a Petco Star Wars contest. It's fantastic! I'm curious about what costumes could have beaten a dog who naturally looks like a Wookiee.

Perhaps, like Chewbacca with the Rebel Alliance, Petco has a rule: no pants, no medal. That's dangerous for the company because Wookiees are known to pull people's arms out of their sockets when they lose.

-via Tastefully Offensive

How to Train Your Boyfriend

Neatoramanauts, rejoice! We've returned with more neat and funny pictures of the day, over on our Lolpic blog NeatoPicto:

Cannot Unsee: Grandma Caterpillar Putting On Lipstick

Forget Big Brother! by Bizarro

"Intentionally Better Products"

Love funny pics? View tons more at NeatoPicto!

A couple winters ago, redditor SearonTrejorek snapped this incredible photo at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Beautiful!

SearonTrejorek smashed it on the ground after taking the photo. He should have instead heeded the advice of another redditor and sold it on eBay. That's worth at least a $100.

-via Twisted Sifter

This sign makes it very clear that you are not to go in here. It also addresses the possibility that you look at such signs and say, “Or else what?” like I sometimes do. The consequences are clear. -via reddit

Image Via

What is up with reboots? We can understand wanting to make the most out of an intellectual property, but what happened to original ideas? Sorry, getting a bit ahead of myself. Seems some recent news has leaked that Steven Spielberg will be rebooting his Minority Report movie into a TV show. As stated on Pajiba:

"Steven Spielberg is developing a TV series based on his 2002 hit sci-fi movie “Minority Report” that will be written by “Godzilla” scribe Max Borenstein and produced by Amblin Television, an individual familiar with the project has told TheWrap."

For those who may have missed the Tom Cruise flick, Minority Report is about a "pre-crime" unit who can assess the likelihood of someone committing a crime and can stop it. There is fine print, though, as there is with all good science fiction. This procedure in which they find future crimes seems to hint that our protagonist is going to commit a future crime, and he ends up having to go on the run and figure the whole mess out before he, himself, is taken out.

Keep in mind, that is just the movie (and book) version. Details on how the show will play out are still very vague except for the fact that we know Spielberg is on-board in some manner.  Though TV needs more original ideas and concepts, we will be curious to see how this show plays out. More details as they emerge.

Link Via Pajiba

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Lucky Puppy is a cage-free dog day care facility in Maybee, Michigan. There's a 21 by 41-foot bone-shaped pool for lucky dogs who get a break from their human families. It's a walk-in pool, which is great for pups like mine who prefer to get just their bellies wet.

Other dogs, particularly those of the Labrador persuasion, though, jump in as quickly and as often as possible!

-via The Presurfer