Chris Brennaman, like many people, has thought about how cool it would be to be Batman: Attractive millionaire by day, terrifying crime-fighting hero by night. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Except, I wouldn’t be awesome.

Not really. No one would be. If anyone were in fact Batman, that would mean we would have access to all the resources that make Batman, well, Batman. And having access to all that and opting to put on a cape and a cowl and patrol the cities at night in the most badass vehicles ever is probably the most irresponsible thing a person could do, especially if what that person wants to do is make real change.

What could the character do in the real world that would be more awesome than being Batman? A lot of stuff, if he weren’t so stuck in the rut of playing the hero and protecting his secret identity. Read about four major ways Bruce Wayne could be more effective than Batman at Forces of Geek.
 

The place called Mo'ynaq in Uzbekistan was once a thriving city, but now is little more than a ghost town. What’s really strange about Mo'ynaq is the fleet of abandoned and rusting boats. What are these boats doing sitting in the desert? The nearest shoreline is 150 kilometers away!

The secret is that Mo'ynaq used to be a port city on the Aral Sea. The water, diverted for irrigation by the Soviets, has receded to around 10% of its original size. As the fishing industry collapsed, residents of Mo'ynaq moved out, taking what was useful but leaving the scrapped fishing boats behind. The vanishing shoreline caused a host of problems for the people of Mo'ynaq. Read about what happened and see lots of pictures of the abandoned fleet at Kuriositas. -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Flickr user neil banas)

You’ve seen the cartoon trope of an animal that displays amazing tricks in order to avoid being eaten. That scenario played out in real life at a zoo in China. The zoo in Liuzhou, Guangxi, purchased five live rabbits from a vendor, intending to feed them to a giant python that requires live food. However, one of the bunnies, at only two months of age, walked around on its two front feet! The trick proved the rabbit to be more valuable alive than as feed, so it was put on display.    

Zoo spokesman Xiong Shao said: "We thought that perhaps the rabbit had damaged its back legs, but when it isn't walking on its hind legs the two back legs seemed to work perfectly. It doesn't seem to be in any pain so there is no reason for it to walk like this, it can't be easy. We are completely baffled as it was too young really to have been taught any tricks, and whoever heard of teaching rabbits to walk on their front legs?"

The bunny has proved to be a very popular draw among zoo patrons. That’s one smart bunny.  -via Arbroath

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A curious kitten jumps into a box to find out what all that squeaking it. It’s an incubator full of ducklings! You’d think that would be kitten heaven, but this little guy is soon overwhelmed. You’ve probably seen the .gif going around, and here’s the full video, courtesy of Ignoramusky. -via Everlasting Blort

Although it seems like it’s been around forever, YouTube is now ten years old. The domain www.youtube.com was registered on Valentines Day in 2005. Founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim (who met when they all worked at PayPal) thought it might fill a niche in making video sharing on the internet easier. And it certainly did. YouTube became a juggernaut, and was bought by Google in 2006. In honor of the occasion, mental-floss has posted the top YouTube video of each year since then.

If you’re calling for help, you may as well ask for everything you need help with. Customer support is there for you. Just follow the simple instructions to achieve the zen of acceptance. Or maybe the geek on the other end of the line just wants to have fun with you. This is the latest comic from Alex Culang at Buttersafe.

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Nala the cat lives in Norway. A Maine Coon/Norwegian Forest Cat mix, she is well-adapted to cold weather because she wears a thick fur coat -and she loves snow! Watch her beg to go outside, run through snow, dig in snow, catch snowballs, chase snowballs, and even eat snow. Alexander Fredriksen says that when she pops up in the window, it's not because she wants in, but because she wants someone to come out and play with her. There are also some non-snow clips of Nala, who is altogether an attractive cat. -via reddit

North Korea’s public relations team has been busy. A new set of 310 patriotic slogans have been released, many of them encouraging food production, and it is assumed that citizens will start memorizing them immediately. Some of the weirder ones:

Let this socialist country resound with Song of Big Fish Haul and be permeated with the fragrant smell of fish and other seafoods!

Let us turn ours into a country of mushrooms by making mushroom cultivation scientific, intensive and industrialised!

Make fruits cascade down and their sweet aroma fill the air on the sea of apple trees at the foot of Chol Pass!

Our Party's new line of simultaneously promoting the two fronts is a permanent strategic line that we must pursue as long as there exists the threat of aggression by the imperialists.

More stylish school uniforms and quality school things for our dear children!

Let the strong wind of fish farming blow across the country!

Personally, I could do without the strong wind of fish farming, but more stylish school uniforms would be nice. Read the entire list at BBC News. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: KCNA)

Although it might not seem like the perfect date movie, The Silence of the Lambs was released on Valentines Day in 1991. But when you think about it, doesn’t watching it make you want to hold someone close? Like holding on for dear life, that is. But there’s a more complicated reason it was released in February -to distance the movie from competing with Dances With Wolves in Academy Award competition. There may be a few other things you didn’t know about The Silence of the Lambs, like:  

3. THE RIGHTS TO HANNIBAL LECTER WERE GIVEN AWAY FOR FREE.

The 1986 movie Manhunter was based on Thomas Harris’ 1981 novel Red Dragon, the first of four books featuring the most infamous psychiatrist/cannibal in the world. Manhunter barely made half of its budget back at the box office, so producer Dino De Laurentiis gave away the rights he had for Lecter to the Lambs producers gratis. Lecter’s second movie ended up making $272.7 million, about $264 million more than his first.

4. GENE HACKMAN WAS INITIALLY GOING TO STAR AND DIRECT.

Hackman and Orion Pictures split the $500,000 needed for the movie rights to the book. But Hackman dropped out days after he watched clips of himself at the 1989 Oscars as FBI Agent Alan Parker in the violent Mississippi Burning, deciding not to follow up a dark role with an even more potentially hate-able character.

There were a lot more behind-the-scenes changes in the movie before filming ever began, but it all worked out to make a big hit in the end. Read the rest of the movie trivia about The Silence of the Lambs at mental_floss.

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La Confiserie CandyLabs in Montreal is known for handcrafted hard candy with shapes inside. Watching how they do it is mesmerizing. After they cook and flavor the candy, it gets manipulated -a lot. All that manipulation to make the designs goes on in a hurry to keep the candy at the right temperature, consistency, and shape. I was impressed with how clean the process is, despite how much handling the candy goes through. The entire process takes about three hours. If you’re in Montreal, you can see them do this live! -via mental_floss    

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Cut Video sat several couples down for a game of Truth or Drink. If you don’t want to answer a question truthfully, you can take a drink. The idea of the game is that as the people get drunker, they will become more truthful. However, these folks are pretty truthful from the start, even with the cameras rolling. While there are funny moments, the overall impression is that these folks love each other, and that’s just sweet. Contains adult subject matter but no profanity. -via Buzzfeed

Saturday Night Live debuted in 1975, and the show is ready to celebrate with a 40th Anniversary Special this Sunday night. In honor of the occasion, Rolling Stone compiled a mega-list of all the aspiring actors, comedians, and entertainers that were SNL cast members over the years. Some stayed with the show a long time (Kenan Thompson), others did a short stint and became better known for something else (Paul Shaffer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and some just faded away. Some became movie stars (Robert Downey, Jr.) and others became TV stars (Jane Curtin, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey). One became a senator (Al Franken), and several died way too early (John Belushi, Phil Hartman). You can skip through to the top twenty, but the top twelve will not surprise you. Scroll through the entire list and you’ll be reminded of Saturday Night Live cast members you’d completely forgotten were on the show.    

Oh, you thought we were going to let Friday the 13th slip by without a mention of Jason Voorhees? Au contraire! When Vanessa Lawson and Josh Morden got engaged in 2013, they had a photo shoot to announce the news. It began as a nice walk through the countryside, but then became a reenactment of the movie Friday the 13th. Now they are enshrined in a post listing The 14 Geekiest Couples To Ever Get Married, which features couples reenacting all kinds of movies and fandoms. See how we combined Friday the 13th with the theme of Valentines Day love?

(Image credit: Brandon Gray Photography)

We posted about the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia, quite a few years ago. It displays objects that symbolize broken relationships from all over the world, along with the stories behind them. You don’t have to go to Zagreb, though, because the museum is opening an exhibit at Root Division in San Francisco beginning on Valentines Day.  

“We were trying to preserve the emotional heritage of past loves, because no one talks about them,” artist Olinka Vištica—who co-founded the museum with her ex-boyfriend, artist Dražen Grubišić—tells me during the installation at Root Division. “Self-help instructions will tell you to forget about everything and be prepared for something new so you get ‘cured.’ But we never thought that our relationship was an illness. So we thought it would be great to preserve something from it, like proof that it ever existed.”

Olinka Vištica explained the concept and history of the Museum of Broken Relationships to Collectors Weekly, in a post that also shows us some of the exhibits and their stories.

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It’s been a while since we had a new song from Parry Gripp, and this one is about bunny love!

I’m a Boppity Bunny and I need your love
Visit me at the bunny shelter, give me a hug
Drive me to a fancy restaurant in your car
Set me down on the lettuce in the salad bar

These bunny rabbits were filmed at the shelter called Bunnies Urgently Needing Shelter (B.U.N.S.) in Santa Barbara. They are available for adoption. -via Tastefully Offensive

See also: more songs by Parry Gripp.