The warning that masturbation will make you go blind has been around since (literally) ancient times. It's been repeated over generations because it's an easy way to avoid saying anything else about it. Even in modern times, when we know there's no truth to the connection between self-pleasure and blindness, it gets repeated as a joke anyway. The old wive's tale got an occasional boost from what was considered scientific literature at the time.  

In 1712, Dutch theologian Balthasar Bekker published a monograph with the succinct and catchy title, “Onania, or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution, And All Its Frightful Consequences, In Both Sexes, Considered: With Spiritual and Physical Advice To Those Who Have Already Injured Themselves By This Abominable Practice.”

In it, he claimed that masturbation leads to “disturbances of the stomach and digestion, loss of appetite or ravenous hunger, vomiting, nausea, weakening of the organs of breathing, coughing, hoarseness, paralysis, weakening of the organ of generation to the point of impotence, lack of libido, back pain, disorders of the eye and ear, total diminution of bodily powers, paleness, thinness, pimples on the face, decline of intellectual powers, loss of memory, attacks of rage, madness, idiocy, epilepsy, fever and finally suicide.”

It’s a list of ills that might well make a person consider themselves lucky to only lose their eyesight.

Read more about the history of the rumor at Mel Magazine. The article should probably be considered NSFW. -via Digg

(Image credit: Flickr user Ben Tesch)

Some people are too literal. This guy with the beard, well, he's too literal but got lucky anyway. The guy with the bandana was not so lucky. That's just the kind of nonsense you'd expect from Zach at Extra Fabulous Comics. 

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

"I was born in Liverpool, but I grew up in Hamburg"

-John Lennon

In August of 1960, a young and struggling group of teenage musicians from Liverpool often hung out, and played occasional gigs, at a club called the Jacaranda. By this time, after many changes, the group had finally decided to call themselves "the Beatles." The Jacaranda was run by a small-time promoter and hustler named Allan Williams. The Jac, as it was known, was actually the hangout of several Liverpool bands, all hanging around, waiting for their "big break."

In the early months of 1960, Williams had sent one of these local bands to Hamburg, Germany, to play. This first group was Derry and the Seniors, one of the hundreds of Liverpool bands which existed at the time. This experiment had proven successful and now, an "entrepreneur" in Hamburg, Bruno Koschmider, was asking for a second band to come over and play for his nightclub customers.
 
Williams's first choice was a top-rate local band called Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, which featured a flashy drummer named Richard "Ringo Starr" Starkey. But Rory and his boys were booked up, at the time committed to playing the summer at Butlin's Holiday Camp. Williams also tried to get Gerry and the Pacemakers, but they too declined.

Hard up to find a group, Williams next asked the Beatles, who happily accepted.

Boxwars is when a bunch of people fight each other using homemade weapons and armor constructed from cardboard. It looks like great fun! Great Big Story went to Melbourne, Australia, to meet some Boxwars participants and watch a battle.

Ready for combat? Grab some cardboard, tape and hot glue for a battle of epic proportions. Welcome to Boxwars, the bizarre medieval-inspired sport that’s given adults the chance to play. Participants get together to create a full range of battle gear using nothing but reclaimed cardboard and packing supplies. Originally devised by a small group of friends over drinks, Boxwars has grown to become a global phenomenon, with teams across Europe, Australia, the United States and Japan.

(YouTube link)

I get it! Where do I sign up? -via Tastefully Offensive

Or brightness! Or maybe a strong glow? Definitely less shade. (Inside the epic quest to translate the Bible.)

It doesn’t matter who you are -a Sunday school teacher, a 12-year-old memorizing the Torah for your bar or bat mitzvah, or an atheist who has never set foot inside a church- you probably know the opening phrase of the Bible. And, chances are, you have it wrong.

“In the beginning,” the King James Bible starts, “God created the heaven and the earth.” Most of the English-speaking world will recognize that line. But it’s not an accurate translation of the original ancient Hebrew.

The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (NRSV), a translation that was honed by a diverse council of experts throughout the 20th century, offers this alternative: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.” That isn’t quite right either.

The 100-plus other English translations also miss the mark. And here’s where it gets complicated. It’s not because they’re poor translations. The NRSV, for example, is among the best. It serves as the base material for The New Oxford Annotated Bible, which is arguably the most comprehensive study Bible money can buy. But the New Oxford includes a footnote, right in the beginning, alerting the reader to different versions of that line. According to Michael D. Coogan, Oxford’s editor, the best translation of Genesis 1:1 is: “When God began to create the heavens and the earth.”

For millions of believers, that alteration shifts the timeline for literally everything. “It’s not talking about an absolute beginning,” Coogan explains. “The beginning of the cosmos, the big bang, or anything like that. But just, when God started to create the heavens and the earth, this is what he did.” Coogan and his team of scholars at Oxford University Press aren’t allowed to change the text, so their Bible includes a brief footnote and moves on.

After all, it’s just the beginning.

Meet the rusty spotted cat (Prionailurus rubiginosus), a wildcat that lives in Sri Lanka, India, and Nepal. Adults of the species weigh between two and 3.5 pounds, and could fit in your palm if they weren't wild cats. Wait until you hear this one's mighty roar!

(YouTube link)

Watching this little guy, it's hard to believe he is almost full grown. The clip is from an upcoming episode of the new BBC TV show Big Cats. Yeah, that's a contradiction, but I wouldn't want them to pull the segment on the rusty spotted cat just because of the show's title. In case you'd like to see more, here's a video of a couple of well-fed rusty spotted cats who live at a sanctuary.  -via Digg

Among new car buyers, which models are kept the longest? It's an odd question, as I thought anyone who could buy a new car would buy another in a few years. But there are people who buy a brand-new vehicle and like it enough to keep it for years and years. According to the research by ISeeCars, Toyota is the brand of vehicle most likely to last 15 years or more. 

The automotive research firm analyzed over 650,000 cars from the 1981-2002 model years sold in 2017. Fifteen models were at least 1.6 times more likely than average to be kept by the original owners for 15 years or more. Along with nine Toyotas, Honda was the only automaker to earn multiple spots on the list with two. Other manufacturers joining Volkswagen with one model on the list include Acura, Subaru, and Nissan.

As you can see from the chart, the highest ratio of keepers is still less than 20%, so we can still find used Toyotas on the market. -via Jalopnik

Have you noticed how many websites have dropped comment sections completely in the past couple of years? Toxic comments, flame wars, and spam are to blame. Meanwhile, this comic is a true story. Jeff Lovfers at Don't Hit Save is going the other direction, and has just now added a comment section to his comic website. So far, it's going well for him.

We all like a little feedback and community engagement. Neatorama doesn't have as many comments as it once did, because now you must register as a Neatorama member to post comments. But fewer comments aren't all bad. Not all posts have conversations, but the conversations we have are better, and I've gotten to know some Neatoramanauts pretty well. If you don't have a Neatorama account, what are you waiting for? Click the button at the top of the page and join us!     

Have you ever accidentally shown someone a picture that you shouldn't have? Something embarrassing or maybe even a little racy? As traumatic as that can be for you, it's also traumatic for the person who saw it -or even just almost saw it- because now things are a bit awkward. That's an understatement, as you'll see. This video from College Humor contains NSFW language and adult themes, but you won't see any nudity.

(YouTube link)

All the more reason I'm glad to have a dumb phone and co-workers I've never met. Not that I have any embarrassing pictures, mind you... -via Geeks Are Sexy

Taxing salt in India was a lucrative activity for the British East India Company, and the British Crown afterward, but it was onerous for Indians. To prevent smuggling of untaxed salt, the British created the Inland Customs Line, and eventually built a physical hedge made of trees and shrubs along most of it. It took years to get it to grow properly, considering the variations in soil, weather, and wildlife in the subcontinent.

But as the British do, they kept working at it. They dug ditches and brought in better soil. They built embankments to resist floods. They experimented until they found the best trees for each of the many climates that the hedge passed through. Eventually it grew long and tall and wide.

It was, in the words of Sir John Strachey, a lifelong civil servant in British India cited in Moxham’s book, “a monstrous system,” that had few parallels “in any tolerably civilised country.” Each mile required 250 tons of thorny brushwood and other organic material to create, and in one year the patrols might carry 100,000 tons of this plant matter to shore up stretches of dry hedge. In most places, the barrier was at least 10 feet tall and 6 feet thick, but it grew bigger in some areas. It became “a standing monument of the industry of our officers and men and an impervious barrier to smugglers,” another commissioner wrote.

But there were problems. White ants infested the hedge and could bring whole sections down. Bush fires incinerated miles at a time. Storms and whirlwinds could sweep parts of it away. Locusts invaded. Parasitic vines blighted the hedge, the trees died of natural causes. One sections had rats living in it, and the patrol there introduced feral cats to combat them.

Nevertheless, the hedge was worked for forty years. Read about the Great Hedge of India at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Dumelow)

(Image credit: legacystorebln)

Berlin street artist Ibo Omari is transforming symbols of hate into pleasant images all over Berlin. He paints over swastikas (hakenkreuz) to make the graffiti into animals, toys, dancers, flowers, and other images. Not only that, he is leading other artists to do the same through a campaign called #Paintback.

Ibo Omari, a Berliner of Lebanese and Turkish heritage, was motivated by right-wing hate to transform neo-Nazi graffiti into playful images, effectively neutering a symbol that haunts Germany. His NGO, Die kulturellen Erben e.V. works to bring together the residents of Kreuzberg through urban contemporary art.

See a collection of altered swastikas at Laughing Squid, along with videos of the artists at work. The sad part is that there are this many swastikas to cover.

Everyone loves to see a movie that depicts what they do for a living, and for bartenders, that movie is Cocktail. The 1988 film stars Tom Cruise as a skilled flair bartender who competes with a rival not so much with drinks, but with women, which wasn't cool even in 1988. While Cocktail was critically panned, it was a box office hit. If you remember the film, you'll want to learn more about it.

5. The film won two Razzies.

This is about the worst award a film can get. Cocktail won for Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay. It took a while to become a cult classic.

4. Tom Cruise and his wife fought off-set constantly.

He was married to Mimi Rogers at the time and apparently their fighting never stopped when the cameras weren’t rolling.

See more trivia about Cocktail at TVOM.

Dutch artist Victor Engbers (previously at Neatorama) has created a light installation called Homeward Bound for the Amsterdam Light Festival. The lights are installed in the masts of the East Indiaman replica ship Amsterdam at the National Maritime Museum near the old city harbor. It is one of many artworks of light scattered about the city's canals for the festival. From the artist:

The work is based on the St. Elmo's fire, a weather phenomenon in which luminous plasma is created by a coronal discharge from pointed objects such as masts. The phenomenon occurs mostly during or after a thunderstorm, when the air is electrically charged. Sailors considered the mysterious lights to be a good omen: the appearance meant they believed they would make it home safely. It is named after St. Erasmus, the patron saint of sailors and it has been described by the likes of Homer, Shakespeare, Melville and Hergé (in: Tintin in Tibet).

With this work, the artist is propelling the idea that in dark times, we can and should rely on hope.

Continue reading to see more pictures from photographer Janus van den Eijnden. 

Remember the Line Rider video that was synced to "Hall of the Mountain King"? That took a lot of work, but now imagine how much work went into synchronizing a real-world marble run to classical music! The same artist, YouTuber DoodleChaos, used Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers" to design this intricate marble run.  

(YouTube link)

It uses steel balls, magnets, dominos, levers, gravity, and exquisite timing as it builds to a musical climax. There's even a fidget spinner thrown in for good measure. Like the waltz, this chain reaction is a thing of beauty. -via Digg

There's a layer of ice on the backyard pool. Would you try to walk on it? Maybe it would be a good idea to throw something heavy out there first, to check for the strength of the ice. This guy didn't bother with any of that. This video contains NSFW language, mainly at the beginning.  

(YouTube link)

And it ends exactly as you'd expect, but you can't stop laughing because of the laughter. Maybe he's learned his lesson -take the camera away before you do something really dumb. -via Digg