After lurking in the shadows of the internet, animated GIFs have done got classy on us and are starring in their very own mini-documentary. The folks at PBS's Off Book delve into their history and how cinemagraphs are changing the playing field. One thing this video does not do, however, is agree once and for all how to pronounce them.
Animated GIFs Get The Respect They Deserve
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Chef Wolfgang Puck's Weird Thank-You Videos
Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck makes personalized “thank you” videos for seemingly anyone who compliments him over Twitter. He's probably the only person in the world who is MORE polite than ever thanks to social media.
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10 Tantalizing Cloud City Illusions
Not quite castles in the sky, but close. Sometimes nature covers civilization in a blanket of fog, creating surreal floating skylines.
Asiago Plateau, Italy
Via: photography.nationalgeographic.com
Vancouver, Canada
Via: fotothing.com
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Via: cupofjacksquat.com
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Via: photography.nationalgeographic.com
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Pitch Perfect "Party Rock" Parody
Guys, I think College Humor has spy cameras in my house. Not everyone goes out on the weekend. Many of us are home…alone…again.
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Cupcake ATM
All you have to do is pick what cupcake you want to buy, swipe your card, and watch as a camera records the claw as it finds and dispenses your baked treat. Pretty cool, huh? The machine is said to be stocked with about 600 freshly baked cupcakes every day.
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10 Celebrities That Look Like Other Celebrities
Hollywood loves a pretty face. Sometimes so much that they'll use it twice.
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Helpful Dog Cleans the House
A Golden Retriever does her part around the house and gets some cleaning done! Another reason why dogs are so awesome.
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"Mad Men" Ben & Jerry's Flavor
In honor of Mad Men's return later this month, Vulture has released a new flavor based on the agency's silver fox, Roger Sterling. If only it was real!
Source: facebook.com / via: vulture.com
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Goat Eating Pizza In Midtown
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6 Ridiculous First Drafts Of Famous Movie Monsters
It's hard to imagine the Predator or Jabba the Hutt as anything other than the iconic beasts we know and love. But they and others evolved from ideas that at the concept stage were very, very different. And very, …
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The Best Of Fake Science
It's been two years since Fake Science began as a less than factual guide to our amazing world. This list includes some of the best and most popular posts from the second year, along with information about how they changed the world. It's a companion to our summary of our first year .
Why Do Cats Purr?
After this post shook the world, scientists were required to put if they liked cats or dogs better at the bottom of all their scientific papers.
Source: fakescience
How To Solve The Fossil Fuel Crisis
Thanks to this research, gas is free now.
Source: fakescience
Optical Illusions
These optical illusions captivated the world, or at least three or four babies.
Source: fakescience
Understand Groundhog Day
His secret revealed, Punxsatawney Phil left meteorology to study physics.
Via: fakescience
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Animal School Pictures
This is what happens when you send your cats to kindergarten. Angela Rossi of Beat Up Creations makes fine art prints of animals posing for school portraits. Appropriately, they come in wallet and portrait size.
Source: etsy.com
Source: etsy.com
Source: etsy.com
Prints range from $8.99 to $16.99, depending on size. They can be purchased via Beat Up Creations on Etsy.
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Giant Nest Bed
Go ahead and indulge your inner bird.
Source: img.gawkerassets.com / via: gizmodo.com
Source: oge-architects.com / via: gizmodo.com
Source: oge-architects.com / via: gizmodo.com
Source: oge-architects.com / via: gizmodo.com
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31 Crazy Potato Chip Flavors
Tired of your usual flavors? Try some of these flavors from around the world. Or not.
Cajun squirrel
U.K.
Chili and chocolate
U.K.
Crispy duck and Hoisin sauce
U.K.
Lamb and mint
U.K.
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Lindsay Lohan Banged Terry Richardson
To the surprise of no one. Richardson succeeded in making LiLo look good on camera and now she's trying to turn their fling into a relationship.
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Turns Out Pigs Can Fly
Hey kids, don't get between Mom and her food! This applies to pigs as well.
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'90s Middle School Contraband
Children of the '90s, how permissible was your middle school? Here are 20 items that could result in detention if brought or worn to class. Give your school a point for every banned item and a half point for items likely to be confiscated and report back in the comments.
Slap Bracelets
Schools cracked down on the wearing of slap bracelets after hearing reports of children seriously cutting their wrists on the metal interiors.
Coed Naked T-Shirts
Some of us were old enough to get the jokes. Some of us weren't. We all understood the word "naked" though, which was enough to try to hide them underneath button up shirts.
Via: epicwinftw.files.wordpress.com
Homemade Pen/Pencil Cannons
When we got bored in class, sometimes our thoughts turned to turning the contents of our pencil boxes into projectile weapons. Hacking a retractable pen was the best option -- they needed no additional parts to fling something across the room.
Via: funnyjunk.com
Pogs
Fights over games or trading could lead to an outright ban for everyone. But some teachers were never big on the idea of tossing heavy metal slammers around in the classroom.
Via: pogs.wikia.com
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The Kitty Organ
Thank god they're just stuffed toys.
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For Thousands Of Veterans, The New G.I. Bill Isn't Working
Student veterans take out loans, miss classes, and face eviction as Obama Administration falls short on 2009 promise. “It just feels like you're being disrespected.”
In early August of 2009, President Barack Obama stood with a group of young soldiers at George Mason University in Virginia and proudly announced that the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, which he’d sponsored in the Senate, had taken effect.
“This is not simply a debt that we are repaying to the remarkable men and women who have served,” Obama said of the bill, which provides tuition and housing support to veterans. “We are letting those who have borne the heaviest burden lead us in to the 21st century.”
Three years later, the bill has failed to deliver on its promise for tens of thousands of young veterans, according to interviews with students and administrators. Student veterans from across the country report that the Department of Veterans Affairs simply hasn’t paid their tuition yet this semester, or that it just arrived, months late. Promised housing stipends, too, remain unpaid. Veterans are dipping into their savings, facing eviction, and taking out loans to get by. The culprit appears to be simple staffing shortages and bureaucratic sluggishness, but the consequences have been intensely disruptive.
Ohio State University student Jay Sheppard, who spent eight years in the Air Force doing satellite communications, told BuzzFeed he has found himself on the brink of losing a place to live.
“Last time I called them I told them I was facing eviction and it still took them two months,” he told BuzzFeed. “This past quarter was the worst that it's ever been.”
Sheppard, who’s majoring in English, said he works odd jobs outside of school, but he’s taking 20 credit hours and can’t hold down a steady job until he graduates in June.
“I don't even have savings left anymore,” he said. “I’ve relied on family, friends, things like that.
“It just feels like you're being disrespected,” Sheppard said. “You call the VA and they put you on hold before you can speak to a representative. You’re always on hold for at least 30 minutes.”
Sheppard says he’s made four of those phone calls just this quarter. “The third time, they told me I’d receive the money in a week, and I didn’t receive the money.”
College administrators, lawyers, and government officials say the problem is simply a backlog of processing applications.
“I believe the VA just doesn’t have enough individuals dealing with these issues in each regional office,” said Carrie Weletz, a Maryland lawyer who represents veterans who appeal to the VA. Part of the problem, she said, is that legislators are eager to vote new benefits for veterans, but reluctant to expand the bureaucracy that delivers them.
“I agree with any regulation that gives more benefits to our veterans, the problem is that they don’t have the mechanisms to really institute them,” she said. “They’re just not adding enough people to process the claims and not doing it fast enough.”
The Veterans Administration could offer little more than an apology when asked by BuzzFeed about the rampant delays.
“VA apologizes for any delays and is working to remedy any issues as quickly as possible so that Veterans receive the benefits they have earned,” Veterans Administration spokesman Randy Noller told BuzzFeed in an email, acknowledging that “processing time increases during peak enrollment times, such as January-March (Spring semester) and August-October (Fall semester) which can lead to delays in high volume regions.”
There is no national tally of delayed benefits, but people familiar with the process say that the VA has backlogs of tens of thousands of unprocessed claims from the nearly 700,000 veterans who have taken advantage of the new rules since they became law two years ago. This year, the VA says it's received spring 2012 enrollments from 406,855 veterans. There are four processing centers in the country for veterans’ applications — in Buffalo, Atlanta, Muskogee, and St. Louis – and all are backlogged, officials say. The director of Veterans Affairs at Ohio State, Michael Forrest, said he’s been told there are 62,000 unprocessed claims sitting in the Buffalo branch alone.
“It’s happening at every school in the United States,” said Forrest.
Forrest’s office oversees the affairs of about 1600 veterans. Many of these veterans, like Kyle Knox, haven’t received their housing allowance or tuition yet or just received it – more than two months into the quarter.
Knox, a 26-year-old military veteran who chose not to share which branch he’s in because he’s still serving, is a junior at OSU studying journalism and communications. As of last week, he hadn’t received his monthly housing stipend since December 1st.
“I’ve had to dig into my savings to pay for everything,” Knox told BuzzFeed. “My financial account is on hold. I need to add a class and I can’t do that because my account is locked out.”
Knox stressed that he wasn’t the only one. “Everyone's got something that's creating a problem,” he said. “It's popping up everywhere.” (By the time this article was published, Knox had finally received his money from Veterans Affairs.)
Similar stories can be heard across the country.
John Williford, 25, an Iraq veteran at the University of Texas studying communications, said he was never compensated at all for classes he audited last summer at a different college.
“This last summer I went to North Carolina and was told that I could do an Internet course, something the VA approved me for, working towards my degree,” he said. “I called to make sure the GI bill would cover that class and also give me a housing stipend.” The check never came.
At the University of Texas, he said, “I know other veterans who have had to take out loans. You’re basically just S.O.L. until that check comes in.”
Among the veterans taking on debt to replace the promised checks is Kimberly Carroll, 25, a University of Texas junior who served in the Army for three years.
She told BuzzFeed she has had to take out a loan every semester that she’s qualified to use the GI Bill to pay her tuition because her benefits have never come on time.
“First of all it takes forever to get a hold of anybody,” Carroll, who is the mother of a four-year-old, said. “You need to set aside an hour just to be able to get through. I haven’t called them in a long time.”
Veterans’ advocates say it’s part of a history of dysfunction at the VA.
“There’s so much bad history and poor practices and policies, that have encrusted virtually everything they do,” said Rick Weidman, government relations director for the Vietnam Veterans of America.
Colleges, meanwhile, have sought to accommodate the delays. Forrest said that Ohio State will not expel or suspend veterans whose tuition hasn’t come in yet from Veterans Affairs, but not all schools are so tolerant.
And there are real educational and financial consequences for veterans who, for example, can’t enroll in classes yet because their tuition hasn’t been paid. Or who are forced to take out a loan, as is the policy for veterans in this situation at the University of Texas. Or who, like Sheppard, have had to dig into their savings.
Sheppard says he doesn’t understand why Veterans Affairs couldn’t have prepared better for the influx of veterans claiming benefits under the post-9/11 GI Bill.
“And it almost feels like they make it intentionally difficult to use so you won't take advantage of it,” he said. “Some people in the military would not take advantage of it because they'd see it as a giant pain in the ass.”
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The Day Smartphones Will Stop Getting Bigger
The phones are too damn big. Will this mad race for a bigger screen ever stop? Here, a doomsday theory.
I'm not a fan of huge phones! They're awkward to hold, their batteries die too quickly, and they don't really fit in my pocket. They're battle in a spec war I didn't sign up for, but somehow got drafted into.
Samsung is one of the worst huge-phone offenders, what with the Galaxy Note tab-phone thing. At 5.3 inches, its screen is more than two inches larger than Samsung's first Android phone, which came out in 2009. And the growth seems to be accelerating. When will it end? I don't know! But I have a theory.
Think about it: What might make the young, tech-savvy, predominantly male customers who love these huge phones a little less eager to jam them into their jeans? What's the one thing? Ego.
So I plotted screen sizes of the last eight major Samsung Android phones against their release dates, and had Excel draw a linear trend line. I threw in another line indicating the average human penis size according to Andropenis.com (???).
And so there it is: The day the world's male nerds will start to second-guess their desire for the newest, biggest smartphone. The day something about these phones will start to feel... off to a majority of their users. The Cellphone Penispocalypse. October 2nd, 2012. Mark it.
So, uh, thoughts?
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