You Have Failed NYC by Jedi Hipster

When you dedicate your life to fighting for your city you wind up putting your very reputation as a hero on the line whenever you go out and fight crime, but Casey Jones was never that much of a planner so he never gave his rep a second thought. Next thing you know he's out battling the Foot Clan alongside some mutant turtles for the fate of New York- and the ninjas kept coming until the five of them had to retreat or die. It's not Casey's fault he got in over his head, all he wanted to do was to help take his neighborhood back from old Shred Head and instead he ended up involved in an all out war...

Show the world that Casey Jones has got your back with this You Have Failed NYC t-shirt by Jedi Hipster, featuring a mighty cool design that'll make your fellow TMNT fans sit up and take notice.

Visit Jedi Hipster's Facebook fan page, official website and Instagram, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more action packed designs:

View more designs by Jedi Hipster | More Comic 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!

Russian drivers began using dash cams in their vehicles as soon as they were available to the public. They were important for defense against scam artists who demanded payment for being hit. But the cameras across the vast country caught all kinds of "only in Russia" events that made their way around the world via the internet. Now, director Dmitrii Kalashnikov has compiled the wildest of these videos into a feature-length documentary entitled The Road Movie, which opens in New York this Friday. Here's the trailer.  

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The Road Movie can be pre-ordered as a digital download, available March 6. -via Laughing Squid

They were looking for gold. Prospectors were all over Montana in the mid-19th century, finding both minerals and gemstones, but since they were solely focused on gold, they overlooked the best sapphires in the U.S. They threw away the blue stones that showed up in their pans at Yogo Gulch, not realizing that they were worth more than the gold they were searching for. That changed in 1895, when a prospector sent a box of blue stones to Dr. George F. Kunz, a gemologist at Tiffany's. Sapphires of various colors from Montana were common, but those from the Yogo Gulch were special.

In 1897, Kunz wrote for the American Journal of Science, and detailed the specific and ultimate coloration of sapphires from the Yogo Gulch region. He wrote that the deviation in color of the stones were “varying from light blue to quite dark blue, including some of the true ‘cornflower’ blue tint so much prized in the sapphires of the Ceylon… Some of them are ‘peacock blue’ and some dichroic, showing a deeper tint in one direction than in another; and some of the ‘cornflower’ gems are equal to any of the Ceylonese, which they strongly resemble,—more than they do those of the Cashmere.”

Yogo Sapphires made a splash -and a lot of money. The Yogo Gulch area is still mined for sapphires today. Read about them at The Daily Beast.  -via Digg

(Image credit: Montanabw)

Bill Wurtz (previously at Neatorama) has done so many nonsense songs that it surprises us to hear one that makes perfect sense. Still, his quirky way of constructing a song lends it a real charm.

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Warning: earworm. -via reddit

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

Rodney Dangerfield was one of the funniest stand-up comedians in the history of the field. Rodney's wonderful movies, plus his always hilarious TV appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dean Martin Show, Saturday Night Live, and so many others, kept us all in stitches. His put upon, constantly harassed character who "got no respect" struck a chord with all of us.

Sadly, the hilarious comic suffered a lifelong struggle battling depression (he kept his depression a secret until the 1990's, then he was actually quite open about it). We thank Rodney for the countless laughs he gave us. Now let's take a look at the brilliantly talented and quite fascinating man.

1. Rodney was born Jacob Cohen on November 22, 1921, in Long Island, New York. As a teenager, he helped support his family by selling newspapers and ice cream on the beach, he also delivered groceries.

2. He was writing jokes by age 15. At 19, he decided to try being a stand-up comic. He took on the stage name of "Jack Roy" and performed under this name for ten years. Although he was to later become world famous as Rodney Dangerfield, Jack Roy remained his legal name for the rest of his life.

3. He performed as a stand-up comic until the 1950s. He was heavily in debt when he quit. Before he officially left show business, he worked as a singing waiter (he was fired) and a performed as an acrobatic diver.

4. Rodney spent the '50's as an aluminum siding salesman in New Jersey. He also worked as a truck driver.

There are blue animals, but the species are small in number compared to the other colors among living things, such as red, orange, yellow, and brown. Sure, when we look up to the sky, we see blue. When we look at the Earth from space, we see a blue marble. But the few animal species that look blue don't use pigments -they use physics. And those physics are complicated. It turns out that animals are better at engineering than they are at chemistry.     

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Okay, there's one exception to the pigment thing, which we learn about in the video. Our friends at It's Okay To Be Smart explain why it's so hard for nature to create the color blue. -via Boing Boing

Wherever there are people there are dogs coexisting with human populations that are as diverse as they are, and whether they're trying to please their masters or snatch what they can while the humans aren't looking dogs will always be by our side.

London-based street photographer Alan Schaller normally focuses on “the realities and diversities of human life", but as he traveled the world he noticed the dogs he met were pretty diverse too.

So Alan started focusing his lens on the dogs of the world, shifting his focus from man to man's best friend, but before he shoots he really gets to know his subject:

The process involves getting familiar with the dog first, creating some kind of a bond and gaining their trust. "I find dogs are in general more consistently friendly, unpredictable, and amusing than humans," says Schaller. "Almost every dog I have photographed, unless the scenario has been tragic, has made me laugh at some point when meeting it."

See Street Photographer Travels The World Portraying Very Different Personalities Of Dogs here

The movie It based on the novel by Stephen King was a big hit in 2017, so it's about time for Screen Junkies to give it the Honest Trailer treatment. Watching this, it became clear that the producers just assumed everyone knew what It was about. I saw no trailers or any other marketing that ever explained what happens in the film. I just knew there was a killer clown from a Stephen King novel that was scarier than Tim Curry's TV version.  

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But in the Honest Trailer, we get a breakdown of all the other movies and TV shows that are just like It. And now I know all I need to know about It.

When you don't have a million LEGO bricks, and you can't afford the official Millennium Falcon kit, you do with what you have. The_Librarian_NULL did quite a great job with limited resources, just like Han Solo would! If you don't even have that many LEGO bricks, you can get a tiny kit.

It resembles a small ship from Jay’s Brick Blog Star Wars Advent Calendar, but it's not the same, just a coincidence.

While the tiny ship is cute, it's not the only make-do. Redditor funkblast had plenty of LEGO bricks, but not the cash needed for the kit, so he made the multicolored Millennium Falcon above some time ago. You can see more of it in an album here.  

But if you're into the tiny Star Wars ships, you might be able to squeeze out enough bricks for a minimal Imperial Battle Cruiser and a TIE fighter, by deu5ex. 

There are thousands, if not millions, of pets sitting in pounds, shelters and rescue centers around the world, all of them just waiting for some kind humans to come and take them home.

It's important that as many pets as possible are adopted from pounds and shelters and given a better life, and to help expedite the process some pets have sadly taken to pretending to be purebreeds to make themselves look more adoptable.

But if you're going to adopt a pet don't be a breed snob, because mutts make awesome pets too!

(YouTube Link)

Take Me Home is a short and sweet CG film by Nair Archawattana and students from the Academy Of Arts University, and it reminded me why I love mutts so much- because many of them have an indomitable spirit!

Action star Liam Neeson has a new movie in theaters now called The Commuter. The very premise of the movie reminds us of the many films where Neeson travels, and people die. He is the world's worst commuter.    

Liam Neeson is very bad at being on a plane. He’s the worst at it, maybe. He was on a plane in 2011’s The Grey, and the plane crashed and people died. (The ones who didn’t die in the crash were eaten by wolves, which I’m not sure is worse than dying in a plane crash or better than dying in a plane crash.) (Probably worse.) (It just seems like you’d die faster in a plane crash than you would by wolves chewing on you.) He was on a plane in 2014’s Non-Stop, and it was taken over by terrorists and people died. (His one job in that movie was to make sure it did not get taken over by terrorists and that nobody died, FYI.)

There actually aren’t many modes of transportation that Liam Neeson isn’t bad at using, turns out. His new movie, The Commuter, is out now, and in that movie he’s on a train, and guess what happens: Without spoiling anything, I can tell you that people die on the train.

The list goes on until it sounds like Green Eggs and Ham. You do not want him on a plane, you do not want him on a train, you don't want him in a car, 'cause you won't travel very far. You do not want him on a ship, or or any way you take a trip. And there are a few movies like Leap of Faith in which Neeson does not travel, and everyone survives the movie. Read about the many cinematic troubles Liam Neeson has with transportation at The Ringer.

Kaiju Play by Kaiju Realm

Cosplay is okay, and dressing goth or steampunk can be a cool way to declare your individuality, but when you combine the two and go kaiju everything is more fun! There are far too few kaiju players out there, probably because their giant monster costumes wouldn't fit inside the convention centers, but I'd certainly like to see more. It's just that every city would have to limit the amount of kaiju players allowed to live there- for the sake of safety!

Wearing this Kaiju Play t-shirt by Kaiju Realm isn't exactly the same as wearing a kaiju costume, but it does show the world that you're a giant monster fan and therefore may be pals with a guy who owns a Godzilla costume...

Visit Kaiju Realm's Facebook fan page and official website, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more earth shattering designs:

View more designs by Kaiju Realm | More Monster 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!

It's nearly 2020, and according to pre-21st century predictions of the future we're behind technologically because we don't have flying cars, fully automated homes or personal laser weaponry.

But what we do have are a bunch of scientific advancements that will make you excited for (or terrified of) the future, even if it isn't as flashy or exciting as we thought it would be.

In 2017 we were introduced to an incredibly cool yet equally creeping looking artificial womb:

For years we’ve been told that an artificial womb is possible, but in 2017 researchers from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia achieved a breakthrough that has us thinking it’s really going to happen.

In tests, six premature fetal lambs were placed in fluid-filled plastic containers resembling zip-lock bags. The lambs grew in the device as they would in a conventional womb, developing in a temperature controlled, near-sterile environment. They breathed in amniotic fluid, their hearts pumped blood through their umbilical cords into a gas exchange system outside of the bag, and monitors measured their vital signs, blood flow, and other important functions. The lambs, which were at the equivalent of the 23 to 24 week gestation stage of human preemies when they entered the bags, developed normally. The breakthrough offers a viable and potentially superior way of bringing premature babies to term, but it could still be decades before we see the technology applied to humans.

We were also re-introduced to Boston Dynamics' ATLAS, who can now do backflips and jump around all parkour style.

ATLAS seems to be preparing for the battlefields of the future, where he'll probably be joined by Boston Dynamics' newest robot, Handle, the free-wheelin' pony-bot.

These robots have come a really long way since being introduced just a few years ago, but have they already come too far?:

Also in 2017, robots started to teach other robots new skills, and this heavily armored robot was voted most likely to trigger the robopocalypse. Indeed, robots and drones got so scary in 2017 that the United Nations hosted a discussion on banning autonomous killing machines at a conference on conventional weapons.

See The Most Futuristic Predictions That Came True In 2017 at Gizmodo

Saturday morning, residents of Hawaii received an alert of incoming missiles, with a tag that "this is not a drill." Panic ensued, and it was 38 minutes before the news followed that it was a false alarm. How did it happen? The explanation was that an employee pushed the wrong button. There is speculation that it was an option in a drop-down menu. The video above is an easy explanation, because it's happened to all of us. -via reddit

Johnny Cash is one of the most famous musicians of all time, and even though he started out playing rockabilly he went on to transcend musical genres to garner an extremely diverse fan base.

But as it turns out hate groups like the KKK and white supremacists have hated Johnny Cash since his early days- because they mistakenly thought he was married to a black woman.

Sound like a stupid reason to hate a musician with such an amazing catalog of music? Welcome to the Jim Crow South of the 1960s.

It all started on October 4, 1965 when Johnny was arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border for trying to smuggle in a bunch of amphetamines and sedatives he'd bought off a dealer in Mexico:

Customs agents found 475 Equanil tablets and 688 Dexedrine capsules stashed in his guitar case and threw him in jail. Cash spent a night in jail and, two months later, plead guilty to the possession of illegal drugs.

He got off with a deferred sentence and a $1,000 fine—and had no idea that, as he walked down the courthouse steps in El Paso, Texas, with his wife Vivian, he was about to spark a firestorm.

An Associated Press photo of Cash and Vivian ran in newspapers the next day—and to some readers, it appeared that Vivian, an Italian-American woman who was rarely photographed, was black.

The National States Rights Party, an Alabama white supremacist group, republished the photo in its newspaper, The Thunderbolt, with an article that dripped with racist rhetoric. The money generated by Cash’s hit records, it claimed, went “to scum like Johnny Cash to keep them supplied with dope and negro women.”

Cash was harassed and boycotted by some Southern fans. “Johnny and I received death threats, and an already shameful situation was made infinitely worse,” recalled Vivian in her 2008 memoir.

In an October 1966 article, Variety described Cash as “the innocent victim of a targeted hate campaign in the south.” The “racial error,” wrote the anonymous author, had sparked boycotts and threats. “In the code of the south,” the article continued, “there is no greater crime than miscegenation.” At the time, interracial marriages were banned throughout the South.

Read Why Hate Groups Went After Johnny Cash In The 1960s here