BOOB TRICK by geekchic tees

Some guys act like boobs force them to stare, like they have some sort of hypnotic power over their minds that captures their attention and won't allow them to look away, but the truth is these guys were never taught manners or they're just straight up a-holes. If these rude dudes had been raised right they would know better than to sit and stare at a woman's chest, but they think there'll be no repercussions for their boorish behavior, so they must be shown the error of their ways. And whether women think the right way to do that is by being rude to them, utterly ignoring them or declare outright war against their sexist ways they're all right- because the right way to handle these jerks is leave them loveless and forever alone until they learn to stop being such pigs!

Show the world you're a rebel with better things to do than be ogled by boors by wearing this BOOB TRICK t-shirt by Geekchic Tees, it's a humorous way to diffuse an otherwise uncomfortable situation and declare your independence from objectification.

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Here's the story: Back in 2009, Deadmau5 did a song called "Strobe." In late 2017, the one-man band Sparkee did a remix of the song (called Sparkee NuDisco Remix) and sent it to Deadmau5 to critique. Deadmau5 was impressed, but insisted that the song, particularly the bass solo, was played on midi because it would be technically impossible to play it on an instrument. He forgot that bass players have more fingers than strings, and dedicated musicians do amazing things with them. Bass player Davie504 (previously at Neatorama) took that as a challenge, and posted this video Thursday.   

(YouTube link)

Sparkee thought that was pretty cool, and the next day showed how he did the guitar solo.

(YouTube link)

And to top it all off, kazoodac mixed the previous two videos together to create an artificial band via internet. Cool! Never underestimate those who put their time and talent into their art, for they will find a way to rise to the top of what gets shared on the internet. -via reddit

The Tudor dynasty that ruled England from 1485 to 1603 had plenty of drama, but the peculiar institution of slavery was not one of them. And neither was the population totally white, as depicted in historical dramas. People from Africa and their descendants were a small minority, but during that period, they lived among various social classes in England: servant, tradesman, craftsman, farmer, and even part of the royal staff.

At the College of Arms in London on a 60-foot-long vellum manuscript sits an image of a man atop a horse, with a trumpet in hand and a turban around his head. This is John Blanke, a black African trumpeter who lived under the Tudors. The manuscript was originally used to announce the Westminster Tournament in celebration of the 1511 birth of Henry, Duke of Cornwall, Henry VIII’s son. Blanke was hired for the court by Henry VII. The job came with high wages, room and board, clothing, and was considered the highest possible position a musician could obtain in Tudor England.

Blanke was no anomaly, but was one of hundreds of West and Northern Africans living freely and working in England during the Tudor dynasty. Many came via Portuguese trading vessels that had enslaved Africans onboard, others came with merchants or from captured Spanish vessels. However once in England, Africans worked and lived like other English citizens, were able to testify in court, and climbed the social hierarchy of their time. A few of their stories are now captured in the book, Black Tudors by author and historian Miranda Kaufmann.

So what changed? The age of exploration and the lucrative new colonies that relied on slave labor to enrich those who claimed them. Read about the changing status of black people in England at Atlas Obscura.

Some pets that seem very similar, like parrots, cockatiels and parakeets, have vastly different lifespans- parrots can live 50 years or more, cockatiels live about half as long and parakeets live about 5-8 years.

So why do animals have such different lifespans? On a base level it has to do with environment and body size, with colder environments slowing down metabolic rates and heartbeats and thereby allow animals to live longer.

But if you dig deeper you'll find that an animal's lifespan is also affected by the mechanics of their cell division- animals that have cells that can divide and are replaced when damaged live longer.

(YouTube Link)

This TED talk by Dr. João Pedro de Magalhães breaks down all the reasons why animals have such vastly different lifespans, explaining that similar animals age at different rates due to genetic differences, like how their cells respond to threats. So while parakeets don't live long enough to become teenagers cockatoos live long enough to join AARP!

Kotzebue, Alaska, has around 3,500 residents, most of whom fish and hunt for food in the traditional way. But the small town above the Arctic Circle is listed by the EPA as the most toxic community in America. In 2016, Kotzebue released 756 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the environment. Those chemicals find their way into the air, the sea, the seals and caribou that people eat, and into the water supply. It comes from the Red Dog Mine, one of the world's largest lead and zinc operations. The company that runs the mine complies with state and industry regulations, yet the National Park Service, which monitors the Cape Krusenstern National Monument, report high levels of lead and cadmium in the area that the mine's trucks travel through.

...in the Native village of Kivalina, about 90 miles up the coast from Kotzebue—and located closer to Red Dog—there is growing concern about the mine. The village is located near the mouth of the Wulik River, a source of fish and water for villagers. One of the creeks that flows into the Wulik is the Red Dog, which begins near the Red Dog Mine. Treated mine wastewater is discharged into the Middle Fork of Red Dog Creek under an Alaska Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit.

“We started hearing and seeing the people getting sick, especially the newborns, with issues we have never seen before,” said Millie Hawley, the tribal transportation coordinator.

She described newborns being born with heart issues, including one infant that had to travel hundreds of miles for heart surgery, and said kidney problems were an issue for teenagers. “We believe it is from drinking the Red Dog Mine over the last 25 years,” she said, “but there is no proof of that.”

Read about the Red Dog Mine and the polluted towns and villages around it at National Geographic.

(Image credit: Katie Orlinsky/National Geographic)

The Harlem Globetrotters basketball team collaborated with Georgia Tech to produce a Rube Goldberg contraption that makes basketball trick shots! Georgia Tech's School of Industrial Design built the machine, and their School of Music created the soundtrack.

(YouTube link)

The finished video is an ad for the Globetrotters, and full of cuts and edits, so we will never know if the whole thing worked in one continuous sequence. -via Digg

The first Europeans in Papua New Guinea settled on the coastline, and thought that the mountainous interior was uninhabitable, until the 1930s, when Michael, James, and Daniel Leahy went there to mine gold. They found hundreds of tribes living there, people who had never seen white men, or guns, or metal tools.

In the highlands the Leahys found wide, fertile valleys, groomed with garden plots that were later estimated to feed a million inhabitants sorted into hundreds of tribes and clans. The highlanders lived in huts of timber and kunai grass, used stone tools and fought with wooden spears and arrows. Just as white settlers had been unaware of their existence, the highlanders had no idea that anyone lived beyond the mountains.

At first, they suspected the white men were spirits, or maybe lightning come to earth. More curious than afraid, they traded with the white men, sweet potatoes and pigs and women in exchange for steel axes and shells (plentiful on the coast, but rare and highly prized in the highlands). When the expedition encountered new tribes, Michael “Mick” Leahy, the oldest brother and acknowledged leader, would shoot a pig to demonstrate his superior firepower. If a tribal “big man” tried to rally his warriors into a raiding party, Mick and his gun bois would shoot a few of them, too.

The Leahy brothers settled in and put the natives to work mining gold and building an airstrip to open up the highlands to outsiders. Fifty years later, Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson went to Papua New Guinea to make a historical documentary and used actual film that Mick Leahy had shot back in the 1930s, plus interviews with natives who were there and remembered what happened. That documentary, First Contact, became a classic. Connolly and Anderson went back and made two more documentaries about Mick Leahy's son Joe. Joe bought land from Guniga leaders to start coffee plantations -twice. The tribesmen never considered land something that could be bought or sold, but agreed to the deal because Joe promised that the Guniga people who worked the plantation would become rich. While that never happened, Connolly and Anderson kept filming until tribal warfare ran them off for good. Or until now. Connolly returned to Papua New Guinea to visit his friends, including Joe Leahy, 25 years later, to see what has changed in that time. Read about that trip, and all that led up to it, at Smithsonian magazine.  

(Image credit: Bob Connolly)

You can see a segment of First Contact at YouTube.

I've always wondered how two of the most popular characters in the world of video games, Mario and Donkey Kong, found themselves at odds, considering most of the DK games cast him as a hero and Mario is a good guy too. So how did the gorilla and the plumber end up bitter enemies?

It turns out the enmity started in the 1984 Game & Watch title Donkey Kong Circus, in which DK is imprisoned by Mario and forced to perform for his amusement:

This makes sense given the little-known narrative of Donkey Kong (1981) was confirmed by Shigeru Miyamoto himself in a 2016 interview: “Mario kept Donkey Kong locked up, so he escaped with his girlfriend.” Thus, the original Donkey Kong arcade game gets recontextualized. Instead of kidnapping Pauline (or “Lady”) for seemingly no reason, Donkey Kong is seeking vengeance against Mario for his wrongful imprisonment.

So Mario ain't such a good guy after all, which explains why he's one of the bad guys in Donkey Kong Jr., but when it comes to the Kong family the biggest mystery is this- what happened to Donkey Kong Jr.?

While DK Jr. is conspicuously absent from the Country games, early Nintendo Power coverage of Donkey Kong Land—the Game Boy adaptation of the DKC series—suggests he was not entirely forgotten. In a pre-release article from issue 69 (1995) of the magazine, several renders of characters appear who would not be included in the final game. One of these characters is a Kong sporting a fedora. We have no information on who this character is, but we can speculate based on his appearance.

Aside from being the sartorial equivalent of a condescending “m’lady”, the fedora can be used to denote a kind of classic American fatherhood—think Finn and Jake’s dad in Adventure Time. Is it possible, then, that this Kong was meant to be the lost Donkey Kong Jr.? Maybe, or maybe not. But regardless, what happened to Donkey Kong Jr.? If he isn’t the modern tie-wearing Donkey Kong, then where did he go?

Say it with me: Great. Ape. War.

Read The Donkey Kong Timeline Is Truly Disturbing here

You've probably heard about how Robert Johnson met the devil at the crossroads in Mississippi and sold his soul for the ability to play guitar better than anyone before. Johnson let folks believe that if they wanted, and even capitalized on the tale in his songs. Whatever happened to take him from beginner to virtuoso, he was far from the first musician to make that bargain, if the legends are to be believed.

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These stories abound because some performers are so good that no one could believe they achieved that level of virtuosity on their own. Talent and hard work were dismissed in favor of a supernatural explanation. Polyphonic brings us a chronological account of the many tales of incredible talent attributed to a Faustian deal. -via Laughing Squid

It's hard for some people to understand the value of an animal's life until they come face to face with that animal, because the animals they encounter in the human world are either pets or pests.

Because of this detachment from nature many humans have a hard time caring about the fact that certain animal species are endangered or going extinct, like the Shoebill (only 5-8,000 in the wild) and the Saiga (critically endangered) above.

And look at how handsome this Iberian Lynx is, can you believe there are only 326 of them left in the wild?

British photographer Tim Flach felt seeing a portrait of these disappearing species might be just the thing to make people care, so he spent two years taking perfectly poignant portraits of the world's endangered species.

Look these Ring-Tailed Lemurs (pop. 2000 as of 2017) in the eyes and tell them you don't care if they live or die or disappear from the planet entirely. Go on, I'll wait...

Couldn't do it, could ya?! Check out the rest of Tim's series Endangered at his site and you'll see dozens more reasons to care about the plight of endangered animals like these poor White-Bellied Pangolins, current population unknown.

See Photographer Spends Years Taking Photos Of Endangered Animals, They're Heartbreakingly Beautiful here

You know the animator who goes by PES from masterpieces like Fresh Guacamole and Western Spaghetti and other works of art. Now we see what he looks like and how he works. In this video, he picks up some eclectic finds from a flea market in California and makes a taco out of them.

(YouTube link)

We don't see a finished animation in this, but maybe we will in the future. -via Boing Boing 

Tavern logo by Buby87 

You'd think a guy with the last name Sizlack would have style, or at very least a charming personality, but Moe lacks style and personality and serves up some of the most horrendous drinks. But the man does have plenty of Duff on hand at all times, and because that's one of the only palatable beverages he serves at his Tavern the Duff corporation loves old Moe the schmoe from Springfield-O. So as crappy as his bar is otherwise there is a good chance Duffman or Duffgirl will come in and get the party started, so maybe that's why guys like Barney and Homer hang out at Moe's every single day of their lives? Moe's Tavern- one of the saddest places on Earth!

Show the world where you like to do your binge drinking by wearing this Tavern Logo t-shirt by Buby87, and for the cost of a few drinks you can spread the Sizlack love wherever you go!

Visit Buby87's NeatoShop for more toon-errific designs:

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Runaway is a fearful word associated with the loss of a child or pet who runs away from home or losing control of a train as it barrels down the tracks.

The latter is less frightening than the former unless you're aboard the runaway train or it's headed right for you, at which point your heart starts to race and your life flashes before your eyes.

That is, unless you're a dumb cow ambling down the tracks without a care in the world, those beef-brained critters never seem to notice when a train is about to slam into their rump roast until it's too late...

(YouTube Link)

Runaway is a dark animated short directed by Cordell Barker, featuring music by Ben Charest (of Triplets of Belleville fame) and appropriately rendered in a hand drawn style reminiscent of Edward Gorey.

Should Hollywood actors be paid 1. a fair wage for the work involved, 2. a percentage of what the movie makes, if they were hired for their star power, 3. whatever it takes to hire that star power, or 4. as little as the studio can get away with? At one time or another, all these methods have been used to set movie stars' pay for a Hollywood film. How much the actor brings to the project sometimes has little to do with their compensation. For example, Marilyn Monroe made $18,000 for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in 1953, while Jane Russell made $100,000. Monroe had more star power, but she was under a studio contract. Things are different now, and much more confusing. A recent Hollywood story told how Mark Wahlberg made $1.5 million for the reshoots for All the Money in the World, while Michelle Williams got $1,000 -for a larger role. So how are Hollywood paychecks decided these days?

In Hollywood parlance, an actor’s “quote” means the base amount of zeroes it will take to get above-the-line talent—shorthand for a film’s creatives—to show up on set. (Below-the-line workers, i.e. crew members and those who work on technical aspects like hair, makeup, and special effects, receive a salary based on union rates.) In a communication leaked during the 2014 Sony Pictures e-mail hack, then-Columbia Pictures co-president of production Hannah Minghella mused about what to offer Wahlberg for an un-produced film called Uncharted. “Mark was paid 17M on Transformers but before that his highest quote was 12M (which we paid him on The Other Guys),” the e-mail reads. “We think 12M is the number.” The “M,” naturally, stands for million.

But blockbusters with a $210 million production budget, like Transformers: Age of Extinction, are quote anomalies due to simple box-office math: Transformers brought in more than $1 billion worldwide, while Guys topped out at $170 million. That’s why in this case, Wahlberg was being offered his previous high-water mark of $12 million. Michelle Williams—who favors artier fare and has yet to star in a franchise—likely has a quote well below Wahlberg’s, despite her reputation and four Oscar nominations. Prestige and awards don’t necessarily equal a raise for actors.

But that's only the beginning of negotiations. There's also percentages, points, and perks. Read about the complicated business of assigning value and salary to movie stars at Vanity Fair. -via Metafilter

It's nearly March and nearly spring, so that means it's time for the undedicated New Year's Resolutioners to give up their newfound active lifestyle and stop going to the gym.

Some will lie about it to their friends and loved ones, others will brag about how they stopped giving a crap again, but only Redditor MastrrBasser had the decency to write a breakup letter to his gym when he quit going.

It seems Planet Fitness wouldn't let MastrrBasser cancel his membership over the phone even though he'd moved away and wasn't looking for a long distance relationship, so he wrote them a letter to make their breakup official:

Planet Fitness wouldn't let me cancel over the phone, and required a certified letter to cancel since I live in a different state now. I dropped this in the mail today. from r/funny

The letter starts off like any good breakup letter should:

‘It is with deep regret, and a heavy heart that I write this letter, but I must come forth with my intentions with sincerity and honesty.

‘Certain events in my life have put me in a different place, and while it was one of the more taxing decisions I’ve had to make of late, it is the right one.

‘The purpose of this letter is to end my relationship with Planet Fitness.’

Then it becomes ever more ridiculous as MastrrBasser reveals how Planet Fitness will always be a piece of his heart:

‘I still think fondly of you, and the time we spent together as I drive by one of your many locations. Sometimes, when I’m alone, I even throw one of my old ‘power-pop workout’ playlists and feel the rush of our past course through me as if we were still one; holding hands with your elliptical machine, and gingerly brushing my sweaty bangs out of my face as I huff and puff in a tumultuous vortex of sweat and endorphins.’

-Via Metro