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I loved watching roller derby as a kid even when it became as staged and over-the-top as pro wrestling, but the derby of today isn't like it was in the old days- and that's a good thing.

Nowadays most roller derby teams are all female and all about female empowerment, giving the women a rough and tumble sport to play and enjoy since they're excluded from so many other full contact sports.

Roller derby teams become like a ragtag family of fighters, and in Austin the women of the Texas Banked Track Roller Derby are taking the sport back to the good old days of grit, gravity and grievous bodily injury:

In the last few years, flat track leagues have led the sport's surging growth – there’s even one here in Austin – but TXRD plays on a banked wooden track, set up and taken down by volunteers at every match. Leagues that play on banked tracks are a kind of homage to roller derby's roots in the 1930s and '40s. Since the banked track heightens gravity's effect on the game's play, it brings bigger hits, harder bumps and messier wrecks. 

"They are a bitch to build and a bitch to maintain, but the skating on a banked track is the old-school, bad ass way to do it," says Dusty Doublewide, a blocker and the team captain of the Rhinestone Cowgirls (Doublewide, like all roller girls, uses a "derby name.") "[Playing on a banked track] looks cooler, and when you hit hard, people fly through the rail. I still want to see that, even after skating for seven years."

-Via Rolling Stone

It's safe to say any and all film footage from the turn of the 20th century is considered extremely rare and valuable nowadays, and thanks to age degredation it's getting rarer and more valuable by the day.

But archivists have been hard at work for decades digitizing old film reels before they burn up or crumble into dust, and thanks to their efforts these historical films will live forever.

This particular reel was shot in London circa 1904 as a 'travelogue' for Australian tourists thinking about visiting "one of the most exciting cities anywhere".

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-Via Vintage Everyday

The best way to learn about a foreign culture is to hang out among the people, see how they live and what they do in their daily lives so you can discover the truth about their culture from the ground up.

But unless you're planning a trip to Russia you may want to discover their culture through the bystander lens of photographer Sergey Maximishin.

Sergey has been shooting pics of real Russian culture since the 90s, showing us how a diverse and unique combination of races, classes and cultures combine to form the nation known simply as Russia.

The Russian people seem to be the main focus of Sergey's photos, and his posed portraits are every bit as compelling as his candid street shots, but the real subject of Sergey's photos is now and always Mother Russia, warts and all.

See Our Small World Through The Lens Of Russian Photographer Sergey Maximishin here

I read a lot of web comics, like way too many to be healthy, and more often than not they adhere to the same time tested formula- joke setup, pause for anticipation, then they deliver a punchline that you've probably already heard before.

But Mr. Lovenstein comics are different because their punchlines are just plain messed up, and the stories told by these twisted little strips make such a strong mental impression you'll be thinking about them for days to come.

See more Mr. Lovenstein comics at Cheezburger

Lightning strikes have been known to leave massive craters in their wake, and seeing all that destructive power on a screen simply cannot compare to seeing a lightning strike up close and at risk of personal safety.

But 38-year-old Daniel Modol wasn't trying to live dangerously when he went outside to record the lightning storm raining down upon the town of Gjerstad, Norway, he was just enjoying the show when it all got a bit too real.

As he was filming the storm from his terrace a bolt of lightning struck his backyard about 5 meters to his right, sending Daniel and his friend scrambling back inside so as not to get zapped. Daniel came back out in a bit to document the destruction, including a 15-foot-wide crater.

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-Via Daily Mail

People who own hot tubs love to complain about how much it costs to heat their hot tub, as if the discussion about cost is an integral part of the hot tub experience.

But what if you could heat up your hot tub without spending a dime on electricity?

Lauri Vuohensilta and Anni Vuohensilta of the Beyond the Press channel think they've found a way to do just that, only their method for heating hot tubs seems a bit dangerous- since it involves using a 50-lb. cylinder of red hot steel.

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-Via Laughing Squid

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Even though we can now shop for goods from around the world safely with our purchases guaranteed by services like Paypal and SquarePay, shopping online is still a bit risky.

Which is why I always make sure the seller is verified, the item is fully described and the feedback is mostly positive, because I know if I don't I might end up with a Spider-Man shirt that shows off way too much skin.

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Even giant corporations like Target can fall victim to online shopping fails, leaving them with a giant batch of name tags for a person who doesn't exist.

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But sometimes you can't actually tell how cheap and crappily made a product is until you get it home and open it up, so don't bet on the bet on the product you bought bringing you any joy during the holidays.

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See 10+ People Who Deeply Regret Shopping Online here

It's sad to think our kids won't truly understand why we dial or hang up a phone, why cashiers ring up our purchases or why we roll up our windows without doing some homework.

Which means either these expressions are due for an update or those who remember are going to have to teach our young about those days of long ago when we had to manually turn a window crank handle to open a window.

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And if you really want to relate to the youth of today you can discuss the origin of the expressions "going on line" and "posting to a message board":

13. WHY DO WE SAY "ON LINE" FOR COMPUTER THINGS?

In the early days of computing, when one machine needed to communicate with another, they had to be attached with a physical cord or "line." Processes that could be completed without this communication were "off line."

10. WHY DO WE CALL IT A MESSAGE "BOARD"?

Before the internet, when people wanted to make an announcement or share information they would put it on a piece of paper and attach it to a board mounted in a public location where many people would see it.

See 15 Common Expressions Younger Generations Won't Understand at Mental Floss

When babies cry and keep their parents up night after night it can seem like the end of the world, especially if you're running on but a few hours of sleep.

But don't let it get you down- remember that your child will grow out of the infant stage in time and may grow up to be a super person if you teach them to be a caring and patient person like you.

Or, as this strip by Sunny Street Comics shows, you can launch the baby into space on a rocket and hope they become superheroes on another planet! (Please don't launch your babies into space, they're needed here on Earth.)

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

Just hearing the phrase "a girl and her robot" conjures up images of sci-fi adventure and bonding between human and cybernetic lifeform, and it makes for a great prompt no matter the mode of expression.

Artist Simon Stålenhag created a series of illustrations based on the premise "a runaway teenager and her yellow toy robot" that serves as their travelogue as they make their way through an alternate post-apocalyptic 1990s:

The artist and author, who hails from Stockholm, Sweden, bases The Electric State on "a runaway teenager and her yellow toy robot," an unlikely pair that travels the West Coast in the aftermath of a massive technological meltdown, which has apparently resulted in brutal warfare between monstrous 'battle drones' and sheepish humans controlled by individual Virtual Reality helmets.

Simon's upcoming release The Electric State will be an artbook like no other- a visual guide that lets the viewer's mind tell the tale behind each fantastically realistic scene, as we wonder when the meltdown began and what 2017 would look like in Stålenhag's State.

See Girl And Her Robot Travel Through Wastelands In Alternate 90s USA In Chilling Illustrations here

Throwing playing cards like ninja stars always seemed too cool to be real, but master card chuckers have shown us otherwise as they toss cards so fast they stick into fruit and cut flesh.

And now that I know it's possible with practice I'm going to follow Scottish YouTuber Mike Boyd's lead and learn to sling cards like The Joker or Gambit or Bullseye!

Mike Boyd is the guy behind the YouTube series Learn Quick so it didn't take him long to make those cards stick, but the craziest part is he figured it out in forty minutes without using any tutorials. He just started flicking cards at a foam board and less than an hour later he'd figured out how to throw cards with deadly precision.

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-Via Laughing Squid

Rick and Morty in Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (source)

When artists go looking for inspiration for their artwork they often look at pics of famous folks, real or imaginary, since their faces are recognizable and have bold features which makes them great reference material.

Abraham Lincoln in Fallout 4 (source)

But there's one main problem with using famous faces as reference material- they're recognizable, and therefore any little mistake in the makeup of their face becomes glaringly obvious in your artwork.

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When game artists tried to add Steve Buscemi's face to a character in Saints Row IV he came out looking more like Steve's cousin Sal, who has a bit of a drinking problem. But this Dwight Schrute from Saints Row the Third is spot on!

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And even though he has a face many people want to punch you've gotta admit Guy Fieri does make a great model for video game characters, but what's with that weird baby head thing from Dark Souls 3? *shiver*

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See 15 Famous Faces Lovingly Remade Into Video Game Heroes here

Sometimes fate can make you feel like a puppet when it takes you for a ride down a predetermined path you're helpless to deviate from, and as the hours slowly creep by you start to feel like you're losing your grip.

But where there's motion there's life, and planning for the future equals hope, so don't lose that gleam in your eye until you've tried to follow your dreams with every fiber of your being.

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Little Darling was created by Big Cookie Studios to express their love of automaton clocks and to inspire us to keep our dreams alive even when life seems like a never-ending loop of lame.

Auto accidents rarely happen without a witness seeing the whole thing go down, and nowadays witnesses often shoot video footage of the accident on their smartphone, which is even better than testimony in a lawsuit.

In this case there's too much evidence against the truck driver to ignore, and the other drivers could only watch in horror as the trucker ignored their warnings about his bucket being up and drove straight into a highway sign. (NSFW language)

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-Via Boing Boing

You'd think the voice of Siri would be rolling in dough after lending her voice to the app, especially considering it's one of the most popular smartphone apps ever and Siri is now BFFs with The Rock.

But as Susan Bennett, aka the voice of Siri, will tell you voice over jobs don't gain you much recognition or money, and even though hers is one of the most famous voices in the world she wishes she'd never lent her voice to Siri.

Here's the kicker- she didn't actually agree to be Siri, and nobody told her those excruciatingly long and painfully boring recording sessions were created to give Siri a voice, because the recordings were sold to Apple by a text-to-speech company:

Siri was developed based on recording sessions Susan did with another company. Susan had done a lot of interactive voice response work (the voice on the phone that tells you to press 1 for English) and thought she was just doing more. "The recordings were done for a text-to-speech company starting in 2005. Apple got all their Siri voices from this company, but they came in after the fact. We had no contracts with Apple."

Selling her voice in this way meant Susan had no say in the usage, and guaranteed she didn't see a dime of the millions made by Apple thanks to Siri's presence on iPhones, which seems like shady practice from a company who could buy the moon:

"I had really ambivalent feelings. I was flattered to be chosen to basically be the voice of Apple in North America, but having been chosen without my knowledge was strange. Especially since my voice was on millions and millions of devices."

"There were Siris all over the world because, for instance, I don't speak Thai or Japanese. They had to have native speakers. And all of the original Siris weren't paid for the usage. We were paid for the original recording sessions, but we weren't paid for being on all those phones. Which is a pretty big issue for us. I know there was one person who ended up getting fired from another job because he was working for a company that considered Apple a competitor. His voice was on the iPhone, and he lost a job because of it."

Read I'm The Voice Of Siri, And No, Apple Didn't Pay (Or Warn) Me at Cracked (NSFW language)