Games are often used as metaphors for life. Chess is often used as a metaphor, although usually for war, which is more accurate in some ways than in others. Tor Bair beccame intimately aware of chess as a metaphor at an early age, and other games came only later.

From the age of seven, I played chess constantly and competitively. I played in school, online, at national competitions. Chess taught me patience, perseverance, critical thinking — crucial skills for tackling life’s hard problems and difficult situations.

Chess wired me to think causally at a young age. Move your knight here; you’ll trap his bishop. Capture that pawn; you’ll weaken his right side. Every correct move led me closer to a checkmate; every false step brought me closer to defeat.

Chess also introduced the idea of the “other”. Black versus white. Our school versus theirs. And every game was zero sum — there was only ever one point to score, either to be shared or taken in its entirety. No way to grow the pie.

The problem is that chess is logical, and can be as simple or as difficult as your opponent is. Life isn’t logical or simple, even though it can take a lifetime to master, as they say about chess. Bair decided that life is more like Tetris than chess, and requires a completely different set of skills, strategy, and philosophy. Of course, playing and winning are two different things. He lays out four ways Tetris is a metaphor for our lives, and it all makes perfect sense. -via reddit

Echo 12, a pilot of the Rebellion, crashed and is left for dead on the ice planet Hoth. He’s not entirely alone there, which makes the situation quite dangerous. Even worse, it will be dark soon.  

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Rebel Scum is a Star Wars fan film by Blood Brother Cinema Co.

Rebel Scum pays homage to the original Star Wars trilogy; nearly all visual effects were created without the use of CGI, using time honored methods such a stop-motion animation. Shot on location in -30°C (-22°F) at Columbia Icefield in Alberta Canada.

There is a moment where it might have helped to have a lightbulb go off over the character's head. Read more about this production at its website. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Marko Petrovich is a security guard at the public library in Portland, Maine. How you see his job depends on how you use the library. While he stays on the lookout for people who use drugs, fight, or otherwise abuse the facility, he also keeps in mind that the library’s mission is to serve all of the public. In winter in Maine, it might be the only indoor space some people have access to, and those folks are as deserving of consideration as anyone else.

The typically quiet library is a vast, open space. When voices escalate, they carry. Even the smallest harrumph can become very public. Petrovich will often put his arm around misbehaving patrons and corral them to the security office to chat. It’s a gentle and vulnerable gesture, and people seem to respond with concession and openness. To be an officer of the library is to be a steward of it. They must be civilized and caring toward the space, its resources, and, most importantly, its patrons.

Enforcement is a defensive act, not an aggressive one, and Petrovich learned the distinction between the two at a young age. “My grandfather telling me one day, ‘You are soldier but you no murderer,’” he recalls.

Those words must have been bellowing in Petrovich’s memory on the night that he deserted the Serbian army, fleeing the country. It was a flight to protect his life, and to protect other people from the killing he’d been tasked to do. Petrovich could fight soldier-to-soldier, or against anyone with a weapon. When there’s fire on both sides, it is, as Petrovich says, “you or them.” His job as a sergeant was to protect his soldiers, but he wasn’t willing to do the job of killing innocent civilians. He had begun to refuse orders that looked to him like he was simply going into villages to murder hundreds of people just because they were Muslims. They were the kind of orders that make what Petrovich calls “bloody hands.”

“I cannot do that,” he says. “It is not my moral things. Not my code. Is not my job.”

Well, that escalated quickly. Yes, the article goes into detail about Petrovich’s job at the library and how he goes about his duties, but it’s also a profile of a dedicated worker with an interesting story. Read the story at mental_floss.  

(Image credit: Alex Nall)

The El Niño winter has brought record breaking rainfall to California after a long drought, resulting in lots of flooding and worryingly wet conditions in normally dry and sunny cities.

These effects are most noticeable when you're driving, which virtually everyone does on a daily basis in San Diego, and those unfamiliar with the city don't realize our roads flood with ease.

One shopping mall parking garage in particular is notorious for flooding, water levels rising to three or four feet at times, yet no signs are posted to warn drivers about potential flooding during rainstorms.

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The flooding of Fashion Valley mall has become a yearly tradition in San Diego, one which the man in the video clearly wasn't warned about before he decided to go shopping!

-Via LAist

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When you watch Netflix through your web browser you see titles sorted into obvious categories like Action, Comedy or Television Shows, with a web address that looks like this- http://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/10757

The number at the end indicates the genre, in this case "British Movies", and by changing that number you can discover all kinds of super specific categories you wouldn't see otherwise.

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You can see a full list of the extremely specific "streaming by type" categories on Netflix here, such as Action & Adventure based on real life from the 1980s (1051), Gritty Chinese Action & Adventure from the 1980s (208) or Violent Cult Movies from the 1980s (3539).

Some of the links on the list don't work, which isn't surprising given Netflix's ever changing selection, but those that do may turn you on to some new movies you may not have stumbled upon otherwise.

-Via Gizmodo

Image: Matt Binstead

It's advice that has long been issued to young and old alike: "take time out to stop and smell the roses." Humans considered to be all too consumed by the often joyless circumstances of their busy lives are those who typically find the saying directed at them the most.

The beautiful animals pictured above and below don't need to be given such instructions. It's their instinct to pause and enjoy the things that please their five senses. People could do well to take after these animals and more frequently savor the simple pleasures. 

Get more sustenance in the form of creatures enjoying the beauty and sweet scents of their environments here.

Image: Armsman101


Image: luchek

Transport Quebec’s automated cameras are there to detect speeders, accidents, and other traffic problems. But this one, on Highway 40 in Montreal, captured the image of a snowy owl in mid-flight on January 3. It was probably coming in for a landing on the pole.

According to Barbara Frei, the director of the McGill Bird Observatory, this young female was probably looking for a place to perch.

"I think they are attracted specifically to the highway because it has open, grassy fields nearby which is perfect for hunting their favourite prey, which is small rodents," she said.

"They like to get a good lay of the land and the high lamp posts or other posts that they can perch on while hunting just suits them perfectly."  

You can see video footage of the event at CBC news.  -via Arbroath  

Bay City, Michigan, concocted a contest to celebrate the city’s 150th anniversary and promote participation in city events. Anyone who attended 25 events would be eligible to enter a drawing for a prize package worth $1500. The city even sent out entry forms in utility bills in May. Maybe the contest seemed too complicated, or maybe it ran too long, but in the end, only one person turned in a completed “passport” showing he had fulfilled the contest rules.

So, congratulations are in order for Taylor Langstaff, a Bay City native who volunteers at the Bay County Historical Museum. Langstaff was the only person to submit a fully-stamped passport after participating in a number of events and activities, including taking in a show at The State Theatre, enjoying a beer at Tri-City Brewing Co., and most recently, enjoy a holiday tour of homes in Bay City's Historic District.

"I love Bay City so much that this was pretty easy," Langstaff said. "I met a lot of people, was able to go to a lot of neat events, take in some great shows — this contest really showed what this city has to offer."

What’s more, there were prizes to be awarded to the second and third place winner, so Langstaff ended up with those, too, for a total of $2,000 in prizes. Those include many restaurant meals, tickets to games and other events, books, a membership to the YMCA, t-shirts, and more. Langstaff will be a Bay City booster for a long time to come. -via reddit

(Image credit: Andrew Dodson/The Bay City Times)

Image: Vulture

Have you ever looked up after reading a book and felt as if the contents so moved you that the act of reading the text was a life- or mind-altering experience? Such a feeling doesn't strike very often in readers' lives, but when it does, they don't soon forget it. 

In part as inspiration for 2016 reading list titles, the staff at Vulture asked a number of noted authors to name titles that felt like life changers for them. Some examples follow; see the list in its entirety here.

Erik Larson, author of Dead Wake and The Devil in the White City
“In a very concrete sense, it was the novel The Alienist, by Caleb Carr, because it put me so viscerally into the streets of old New York that I decided to see if I could conjure an equally rich sense of the past, but in a work of nonfiction. Originally I planned to write about a historical murder but got sidetracked, and wrote Isaac’s Storm, about a giant hurricane. It’s still all Caleb Carr’s fault.” 

Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings
“A book that changed my life is Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Before reading it, I had not encountered a piece of writing about living an authentic life that could engage the emotions with such power and purity of purpose. It was incendiary, transcendent, and made me yearn to be a writer — a dream that would take more than 20 years to accomplish.” 

Elizabeth Hand, author of Wylding Hall and Generation Loss
“Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor E. Frankl. I first encountered this as a high-school senior, when it was assigned reading. Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist who specialized in studying and treating suicidal patients, then spent three years in German concentration camps during the war. His parents and brother died in the camps, as did his pregnant wife, who died at Bergen-Belsen. After liberation in 1945, Frankl developed logotherapy, which aims to help an individual find meaning in her/his life, even in the face of almost unendurable loss and suffering. The first half of this book recounts his experience in the camps; the second is a step-by-step discussion of what logotherapy is and how it works. The German title roughly translates to 'Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp,' and that pretty much sums it up. It's a remarkable testament to human resilience, and a remarkable guidebook for surviving despair. ‘What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaninglessness in rational terms,’ Frankl said.”

In this ad for Heathrow airport, Stephen Fry explains how they do things in the United Kingdom. The small things that matter, like the After You Loop and the constant passive-aggressiveness that dominate social interaction. How dare that guy disagree about the weather!

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It’s all in good fun, however. At least, that’s what they want tourists to think, just in case it doesn’t go completely over their heads. Bless their hearts. -via Tastefully Offensive

The internet is full of advice meant to show us how to be better people, telling us how we should treat others, how to raise our families right, and what it means to be a moral person. But we should ask ourselves this- who are these mysterious advice mongers, and what's in it for them?

If you want to know why society seems to shun you, or why you seem to get no respect, it's because society is full of people who need things. They need houses built, they need food to eat, they need entertainment, they need fulfilling sexual relationships.

the moment you came into the world, you became part of a system designed purely to see to people's needs.

Meanwhile Cracked alum and author of John Dies At The End David Wong has some good stuff to say with (virtually) no ulterior motives in mind, and instead of speaking in platitudes his words of wisdom cut deep like a self-help shiv:

I want you to try something: Name five impressive things about yourself. Write them down or just shout them out loud to the room. But here's the catch -- you're not allowed to list anything you are (i.e., I'm a nice guy, I'm honest), but instead can only list things that you do (i.e., I just won a national chess tournament, I make the best chili in Massachusetts). If you found that difficult, well, this is for you...

THE WORLD ONLY CARES ABOUT WHAT IT CAN GET FROM YOU

Now advice of this type is always take it or leave it as far as I'm concerned, but David's 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You A Better Person has over twenty million views and serves as both good advice and a really entertaining read.

Read 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You A Better Person at Cracked  (contains NSFW language)

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When single father Cory Grimes took his minivan in for repairs shortly before Christmas after trying in vain to fix the vehicle himself, it was with the knowledge that his last dollar would be spent on the bill.

Grimes, a Colorado part-time dishwasher struggling to care for his autistic son, was accustomed to barely making ends meet each month. 

Yet Grimes was stunned when he learned that the mechanic in Strasburg, Colorado who fixed his minivan had learned of his circumstances and waived his $1,500 repair fee.

As can be seen in this video footage, a tearful Grimes, who left the shop with the repair money in hand, expressed his joy in being able to use some of the money to treat his son to a nice Christmas. 

To read more on this story, see this USA Today article. Via 22 Words

Maribel Valencia’s twins weren’t due to be born for another week; the cesarian was planned for January 6. But on New Year’s Eve, the babies had a different idea.

According to staffers at the San Diego Kaiser Permanente Zion Medical Center, the twins – baby girl, Jaelyn, and baby boy, Luis – were born at 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 31 and at 12:02 a.m. on Jan. 1, respectively, to mother Maribel Valencia, 22, and her husband, Luis.

It’s not that unusual for twins to have birthdays on consecutive days, but in this case, they will have different birth years as well. If they had been in an earlier era, they might have to begin school in different years. Nowadays, the cutoff is earlier, often in October. As it is, Luis has the honor of being the first New Year baby in San Diego, while Jaelyn has a lifetime ahead of her to remind her brother that she’s the senior twin. -via Buzzfeed

(Image credit: Kaiser Permanente San Diego)

RIP lemmy. Sad day. Good 70 year run dude!!

A photo posted by Mike Dorsey (@mikedorseytattoo) on Dec 28, 2015 at 5:03pm PST

Mike Dorsey is a tattoo artist and painter. He created this watercolor of Lemmy Kilmister as a Japanese woodblock print and posted it on Instagram the day his death was announced.  -via reddit

At the town of Wagah, a major road crosses the border between India and Pakistan. Every evening at sunset, they hold a ceremony to officially close the crossing for the night. Soldiers from both countries come out, lower the flags, strut and salute, then close the gates on each side of the border. The ceremony is highly choreographed, and a crowd gathers every night to watch -and cheer for their country, although they are admonished not to say anything bad about the other nation. The high-stepping, stylized show is a tradition built on the idea of one-upmanship: who can step the highest and scowl the fiercest?

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The border security forces of India and Pakistan have been doing the Beating Retreat ceremony since 1959. If you liked this video, you’ll love this Fevikwik advertisement that uses the Wagah ceremony as its backdrop. -via Metafilter