If by some chance you were planning to show your love to someone this Valentines Day with a curated playlist, congratulations, that is almost as cliche as a heart-shaped box of candy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. A shared love of music is probably healthier than chocolate, anyway. However, before you go choosing messages of undying love from various top 40 lists, you might want to take a second look at the lyrics. Songs that became classic love songs in the past often have rather problematic story lines.

Whether they’re a little too obsessive, written about an inappropriately young love interest or romanticizing a toxic relationship, there are a surprisingly number of songs about love that actually are far creepier than they were intended to be. To help you know which ones you should steer clear of when putting together your Valentine’s Day playlist this year, we’ve rounded up some of the most disturbing examples. (For the purposes of this list, we’re focusing solely on songs that are unintentionally creepy, meaning self-aware depictions of unhealthy relationships or songs that are specifically intended to shock — like The Misfits’ “Die, Die My Darling” or Gnarls Barkley’s “Necromancer” — don’t fit the bill.)

InsideHook spells out what’s wrong with 13 love songs that you might not have noticed when casually listening. After all, you don’t want to send the wrong message, or give the impression that you don’t pay attention to details. Yeah, "EveryBreath You Take" is there, because that's a gimme. The others may surprise you.  -via Digg

My number #1 rule in life (Jordan Peterson has 12, but I have 20) is "Always wear shoes you can run in. You never know what the day may bring." That's why fashion designer Beate Karlsson now has my undivided attention.

What are your fashion needs? Do you need shorts that make you look like you have Kim Kardashian's posterior? Do you need shoes that look like giant human hands? Beate Karlsson has you covered.

Now I know that it's common to scoff at fashion designers' more... imaginative improvements to haute couture. They tantalize us with designs that never appear in stores. Well, I have good news! You can actually buy these shoes!

-via Super Punch

It hasn’t been long since Google lost Dr. Timnit Gebru, the tech company’s top AI ethics researcher, last December 2020, after apparently mistreating her. Now, just a little over 2 months after Gebru’s termination from the company, engineers and other staff have also left Google.

According to Reuters, engineering director David Baker left the tech giant last month after 16 years with the company. In a letter seen by the news organization, Baker said Gebru’s exit “extinguished [his] desire to continue as a Googler.” He added: “We cannot say we believe in diversity, and then ignore the conspicuous absence of many voices from within our walls.”

[...]

Timnit Gebru used to co—lead Google’s Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team until her controversial exit. Gebru said she was fired after sending an email to the company’s internal “Brain Women and Allies” list. In a report trying to get to the bottom of what happened, MIT’s Technology Review said Gebru’s departure was a result of a conflict over a paper she co-authored. The paper discussed issues with training language AI, including its environmental impact and its potential to cause a disadvantage to marginalized groups.

[...]

Gebru’s exit caused an uproar, prompting thousands of Googlers, as well as academic, industry and civil society supporters to sign a letter calling on Google Research “to strengthen its commitment to research integrity and to unequivocally commit to supporting research that honors the commitments made in Google’s AI Principles.”

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: The Pancake of Heaven!/ Wikimedia Commons)

Toys are normally supposed to make your mood better and not to make it worse. Comedian Jeff Wysaski of Obvious Plant went the opposite way from the norm and decided to make these toys which are insulting at the very least, and morbid at the most. While the toys are considered “fake”, these are “actually available for purchase through the Obvious Plant store.”

Dibs on the leg! How about you? What will you take?

Via Laughing Squid

(Image Credit: obviousplant/ Instagram)

Computer systems and cyber-infrastructures will almost always be imperfect. This is why updates and patches are essential to these systems. But while the devs are busy creating the patches needed to fix the flaws of a computer system, malicious entities can sometimes take this time to launch a cyber attack to exploit the flaws. This type of cyber attack is called zero-day attacks, and this is the worst that could happen to vulnerable computer systems. Zero-day attacks…

can quickly overwhelm traditional defenses, resulting in billions of dollars of damage and requiring weeks of manual patching work to shore up the systems after the intrusion.

Computer scientists recognize the limitations of traditional defenses in computer systems, and so they try to make new types of computer security.

Now, a Penn State-led team of researchers used a machine learning approach, based on a technique known as reinforcement learning, to create an adaptive cyber defense against these attacks.

According to Minghui Zhu, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science and Institute for Computational and Data Sciences co-hire, the team developed this adaptive machine learning-driven method to address current limitations in a method to detect and respond to cyber-attacks, called moving target defense, or MTD.

Learn more about this method over at TechXplore.

(Image Credit: TheDigitalArtist/ Pixabay)

On August 3, 2020, a beefalo was able to escape from a trailer outside the Plymouth Meats processing facility. It was then next seen in Terryville two weeks after its escape. Ever since its escape, the Plymouth Police Department had been trying to capture it, but in all of their attempts, the beefalo was able to elude them. Now, over six months later, the police department encountered the beefalo again, and it seems that, despite the winter storms, it was able to take care of itself pretty well.

The Plymouth Police Department shared a photo on Facebook showing the beefalo, dubbed Buddy by locals, wandering in the snow in the Terryville area of Plymouth.

"As you can see, he is doing fine," the post said. "Ready for dinner."

[...]

A fundraiser to save Buddy from slaughter raised enough money to secure the bovine a new home at the Critter Farm Sanctuary in Florida, but attempts to capture the beefalo have thus far been unsuccessful.

Well, I hope that the cops are not giving up on capturing him. The sanctuary in Florida seems like the better place for him.

Well, what do you think?

(Image Credit: Plymouth Police Department/ Facebook)

Who doesn’t want a relaxing hot coffee or tea while chilling on a plane and waiting for it to land? Well, after reading this, you might want to avoid any type of hot beverage while on the plane.

“Flight attendants will not drink hot water on the plane," a flight attendant told Business Insider. "They will not drink plain coffee, and they will not drink plain tea.” So why not? The answer, which comes from the EPA, is pretty disgusting.

The water used for hot drinks on flights comes straight from the tap rather than from bottles. The EPA did a study on the water back in 2004 and found that 12.6 percent of the samples contained coliform. Not grossed out yet? Coliform count is an indicator of how much fecal matter there is, thus determining the sanitary quality of foods and water.

"Both total coliform and E.coli are indicators that other disease-causing organisms (pathogens) may be present in the water and could potentially affect public health," the study noted.

To make things worse, the EPA also found that of the 158 planes they looked at, two of the planes tested positive for E.coli, which can cause diarrhea and stomach cramps.

Maybe I’ll just stick with the canned beverages next time.

(Image Credit: LeeRosario/ Pixabay)

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A post shared by 티라벤토 (@cafe_tiravento)

Oddity Central brings to our attention this amazing desert. It's called shiltarae bingsu. These fine noodles are actually made of shaved ice! Cafe Tiravento in Seoul, South Korea, makes it.

As I explored that restaurant's Instagram page, I found other amazing dishes that rival shiltarae bingsu as edible works of art.

Amancay Murales, a firm in Buenos Aires, painted the bottom of a swimming pool to resemble Vincent Van Gogh's mystical Starry Night. It's an especially good choice given the watery appearance of the sky in the painting.

You can see more photos here, here, and here.

-via Toxel

Spock rocks. 🖖🤘
See what awaits our heroes at the peak of Paramount Mountain during today's big game. #ParamountPlus pic.twitter.com/LymkkMzZOm

— Star Trek on CBS All Access (@startrekcbs) February 7, 2021

I am informed that there was a significant football game last night. More importantly, the most prized television commercials of the year aired. CBS debuted a series of short ads featuring characters from Paramount's deep bench journeying together to the summit of the mountain on that company's logo.

The results are very funny, such as Spock jamming to SpongeBob SquarePants singing "Sweet Victory" by David Glen Eisley. Other stars appearing together include Patrick Stewart on air guitar, Stephen Colbert working the bar, Dora the Explorer, and Tom Selleck.

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A post shared by Kyle Scheele (@kylescheele)

How would a centaur ride a bike? As the anime series A Centaur's Life teaches us, a lot of design modifications are necessary for centaurs who live in a bipedal-majority world. But those changes can be done. Kyle Scheele becomes the center and centaur of attention whenever he rides this two-person bicycle that becomes serves as a costume.

This is one of Scheele's many creations with cardboard. It is, perhaps, not his most extraordinary. When he turned 30 a few years ago, he held a Viking funeral for his 20s.

-via Boing Boing

(Berkeley Mews/Ben Zaehringer)

There is a single bright spot in this crisis: if you're going to die, it's not because of one of those profoundly annoying Liberty Mutual ads. So in the instant that your consciousness vaporizes with your body, it will retain a bit of dignity.

Food artist Erik Vernieuwe and photographer Kris De Smedt operate Burp, a food photography studio. Lately, they have been altering hot dogs to show famous scenes from movies and works of art. You'll recognize E.T., the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and others.

The full length nudes in the series are especially . . . strange.

What if you want to sell clothes but do not have a mannequin that can be a model for your products?

Worry not, there is a model at home. Who? The husband!

I’m just thinking how the market will respond to this kind of advertising.

(Image Credit: Sis/ Facebook)

Once upon a time, if you wanted to ski downhill, you had to hike uphill first. There were other ways to get people up a mountain, like trains or horse-drawn carriages, but you can see how this would be rather time-consuming and limited in the number of people served. There had to be a better way.

According to the association, German farmer and innkeeper Robert Winterhalder invented the world’s first overhead cable tow in 1906—skiers hooked handles onto the water-powered continuous cable above their heads, then glided uphill on their skis. Though it was easy to use, Winterhalder’s invention didn’t catch on elsewhere.

In America, the first surface lift—the umbrella designation for uphill transportation that keeps a skier’s skis on the ground—was a steam-powered toboggan tow built in Truckee, California, in 1910 and later adopted by skiers.

Canadian skier Alex Foster built the first working model of the rope tow—a continuous rope that skiers simply grabbed onto and held with their hands—in 1931 outside of Shawbridge, Quebec. By 1934, the tow rope technology had made its way to Woodstock, Vermont.

Meanwhile, in Europe, Swiss ski mountaineer and mechanical engineer Ernst Constam invented the world’s first J-bar in 1934 in Switzerland, followed by the two-passenger T-bar in 1935. Both technologies quickly caught on across Europe and the U.S.

Still, all these methods were designed for athletic people, and they were still limited in how many skiers they could serve at once. Meanwhile, ski resorts were opening in the Western US and needed to accommodate as many people as possible to turn a profit. So James Curran invented the ski chairlift, although he was neither a resort employee nor a skier! He didn't have a college degree, and he never profited from his invention. Read the story of Curran's chairlift at Smithsonian.