Dick, willy, doodle, wang. The names go on and on.
What Do You Call Your Penis?
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Working In Film: Stereotypes Vs. Reality
Hint: it’s not all that fabulous.
Stereotype: It’s very glamorous.
Reality: If glamour consists of a lot of sweat, being constantly too cold or too hot, working in pouring rain or inches of snow, having to show up to work while being sick, or being permanently tired, then YES - working in film is very glamorous.
E! / Via elitedaily.com
Stereotype: It’s really easy.
Reality: Does an average of 12h/day with only one break for lunch, often 6 days a week and in extreme conditions sound easy to you?
AMC / Via giphy.com
Stereotype: You get paid a lot of money.
Reality: Sure, if you're Angelina Jolie. Or Tim Burton. Or if you work on big, multimillion-dollar productions like The Pirates Of Caribbean or The Amazing Spider-Man . Small, independent films that make up most of the film industry don't pay that well at all!
ABC / Via noyoureoutoforder.tumblr.com
Stereotype: It's a very fast-moving environment.
Reality: On average, a 12h working day results in 3 minutes of actual footage that will end up being used in the final project. Also, there's A LOT of waiting. For the crew set up for a next take. For the actors to get ready to step on the set. For the sun to come out from behind that one big cloud that suddenly appeared out of nowhere and broke light continuity for the scene...
FOX / Via giphy.com
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26 People Who Failed Harder Than You Ever Thought Possible
Fail is the driving force of all humanity.
Whoever set up this photo op.
This wine fan.
The writer of this obituary.
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Here's Where To Find London's Plague Pits
Are you walking over the bones of plague victims? If you’re in London, there is a decent chance that you are.
Map of London by Wenceslas Hollar, c.1665. Public domain / The University of Toronto. / Via en.wikipedia.org
Most of the pits are in the east of London.
Google Maps / BuzzFeed
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This Artist Hides Tiny Little People All Over London
Slinkachu creates inventive scenes featuring teeny tiny people.
London-based artist Slinkachu has a novel approach to incorporating the city's streets into his work.
Born Free – Wandsworth Bridge.
Slinkachu
He leaves tiny figures across London and takes close-up shots, followed by...
Slinkachu
A wide shot to reveal where they were, such as this one on Wandsworth Bridge.
Slinkachu
"I started leaving the miniatures on the streets around London in 2006 while I was working as an art director, mainly as a creative outlet away from my more commercial work, and the project took off from there," he says.
In his words, he "abandons" the little people – that many of us don't notice them and will probably never see them is part of the attraction for him.
Here are a few examples of his work:
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Here's Why So Many Scenes In "House Of Cards" Have The Exact Same Colour Scheme
Igor Martinovic, the director of photography for House of Cards, told BuzzFeed News that the effect is a natural occurrence and is caused by way the eye perceives shadows.
An article in Slate has pointed out that many scenes in House of Cards look the same, with yellow in the background and blue in the foreground.
Chris Wade wrote that "once you begin noticing this particular habit of the House of Cards colour palette, it is hard to unsee".
House of Cards / Media Rights Capital
And it's true. If you watch the third series of House of Cards you see the yellow/blue effect again and again.
Netflix / Media Rights Capital
Netflix / Media Rights Capital
Netflix / Media Rights Capital
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Suspect In Custody After Responding To His Own "Wanted" Ad On Facebook
Social media was his downfall.
Andrew Dale Marcum was wanted in Ohio on numerous warrants.
Marcum's criminal history included burglary, abduction, assault, domestic violence, criminal endangering, and some bench warrants, according to the Butler County Sheriff's Office.
A Facebook user bearing the same name as the suspect, Andrew Marcum, commented, "I ain't tripping half of them don't even know me," on the Butler County Sheriff's Office Facebook post.
"If you could stop by the Sheriff's Office, that'd be great," the Sheriff's Office responded in the comments. "Hey, it doesn't hurt to ask."
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21 Signs You've Found Your Bro For Life
As illustrated by the bro-est of bros, James Franco and Seth Rogen.
You know you've found your bro for life when:
Kevin Winter / Getty Images
You know each other's most absurd and embarrassing stories like NBD.
Apatow Productions / Via youtube.com
Because chances are, you're part of most of them anyway.
Columbia Pictures / Via youtube.com
You've concocted all sorts of "experiments" together, which you love telling all your friends about.
Columbia Pictures / Via youtube.com
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Twitter’s New Abuse-Reporting Worked For Curt Schilling, But Will It For The Rest Of Us?
A week after the company tightened its abuse-reporting procedures, it’s claiming a partial, high-profile victory. But the real test comes when someone who’s not a world-famous athlete is harassed.
Just a few days after announcing a round of changes intended to make trolling more difficult — including, crucially, an investment in staff and tech that promises to make the process of getting abusive accounts suspended faster and easier — this week, Twitter experienced what could easily be seen as the first major test of its new anti-trolling mechanisms.
It was a doozy at that: After posting a picture of his teenage daughter on Twitter following her college acceptance, the former Red Sox player (and current ESPN commentator) Curt Schilling began receiving a torrent of vile insults and threats, targeted at his child. And he fought back, posting a brutal 1,700-word blog post detailing the abuse and outing its perpetrators.
The hammer came down quickly and decisively: As of this afternoon, one was suspended from his college and was reportedly under police investigation; the other — a Yankees employee, in a strange twist — was fired from his job.
Simultaneously, punishment was meted out online. Because Twitter has tripled the size of its support staff and streamlined reporting processes, Schilling's troll (at least one — the other wisely shut down his account preemptively) was suspended significantly faster than he would have been just months ago
It was weirdly satisfying, watching someone vanquish trolls with the help of Twitter. And from the company's perspective, it certainly looked like its investment was paying off. A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment on the details of the case to BuzzFeed News, but confirmed that the incident is an example of Twitter's new tools and processes working, and that there are still many changes to come.
The system worked. Except, not exactly.
Twitter seems to be genuinely serious about cracking down on abuse, and by all appearances, the speed with which Schilling's tormentors' accounts were suspended represents a high-profile proof of concept of the company's new systems. Yet this was a case where the victim was able to marshal lots of attention, and getting accounts suspended is only part of the battle when it comes to dealing with trolls, and the experience of many, many women on the internet has shown that law enforcement isn't always so cooperative or fast-moving.
Schiling's case was about as far from a standard case of Twitter abuse as you can get. Let's review: The victims were a famous athlete and his child. The too-good-to-be-true particulars of the story — namely Schilling's Red Sox affiliation and the fact that one of his tormentors worked for the Yankees — were catnip for the sports press. And unlike the army of egg avatars and sock puppets that attacked people like Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian under the banner of GamerGate, Schilling's and his daughter's attackers appear to have been both few in number and not very savvy about hiding their identities: In his blog post, Schilling easily identified the two ringleaders by name and profession.
In other words, save for maybe the nature of the bile itself — virulent trolls appear to be nothing if not deeply uncreative — Schilling's story is the exception, not the rule.
For every Curt Schilling out there, there are thousands and thousands of people without the cultural capital to get a quick response from the cops, or whose tormentors don't make it quite so easy. Twitter can devote all the resources it wants to ending abuse, but it's only one actor in a bigger legal and social system — one that's much less nimble and, in many cases, much less equitable.
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How Online Lenders Could Take Billions Of Profit Away From Big Banks
Big data makes lending to the least risky borrowers even easier. And tight regulation of the banking industry has created an opening for new kinds of loans.
Don Emmert / Getty Images
With interest rates at all-time lows and traditional banks laden with new rules following the financial crisis, a new breed of financial institution has emerged: online lending marketplaces that match investors and borrowers, and evaluate borrowers using a wide range of data available online.
One of the largest such companies, Lending Club, raised $780 million in an IPO late last year, while Prosper has raised almost $200 million in venture capital. On these two platforms, loan issuance has grown from $26 million in the last quarter of 2009 to $1.7 billion in the third quarter of last year.
A new Goldman Sachs report on the industry estimates that some $4.6 billion worth of traditional banking industry profits are at risk of being lost to online lenders. Of the $843 billion of consumer loans outstanding, the report says, some $209 billion could move to online lenders and they could eventually capture almost 15% of the market, compared to the 2% they have grabbed so far.
Online personal lending has exploded, and, for Lending Club, it's mostly used to pay off high-interest credit card debt or refinance loans.
Goldman Sachs
The loans offered by these online lenders tend to be fixed-rate loans, paid off in between three and five years, with rates that start around 5.5%. But instead of being funded by bank deposits, they are funded by investors who snap up the loans after they originate, by a bank in Utah, in the case of Lending Club.
So while traditional banks will end up keeping some loans on their own balance sheet, Lending Club merely stands as a middleman between investors and borrowers. Banks still do some human evaluation of credit risk — traditional underwriting — while the online lenders use a wide array of data beyond traditional credit scores. The new online lenders can also offer loans at very high rates (Lending Club's highest advertised APR is almost 29%).
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23 Awesome Facts You Probably Didn't Know About "The Lego Movie"
“Ah, we gotta write all that down ‘cause I’m not gonna remember any of it.”
1. Mark Mothersbaugh, who was the main composer on Rugrats, wrote the score for The Lego Movie.
2. The film racked in a whopping $468 million worldwide.
3. Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller planned to include R2-D2 in the film, but had to scrap him after a battle over ownership rights. However, they were able to work out a deal to have Anthony Daniels reprise his famous role as C-3PO for the film.
4. The film's success will spawn three separate Lego-themed films: The Lego Movie Sequel, a direct sequel to the original film; Ninjago, which will be based off the product line Lego Ninjago; and The Lego Batman Movie, a film that will feature Will Arnett reprising his role as the Caped Crusader.
Warner Bros. Pictures / Via giphy.com
5. After the film dominated box offices, Lego profits skyrocketed by 15%. In 2014, approximately 62 billion Lego pieces were sold, which equates to about 102 Lego pieces for every single person in the world. Whoa.
6. When the idea was initially pitched, Lego executives weren't interested. Their company was already doing very well, and they didn't want to risk it. They eventually changed their minds after reading the treatment by Kevin and Dan Hageman.
7. All Lego pieces in the film were digitally rendered, resulting in a total of 3,863,484 pieces. However, if the producers had chosen to make the film stop-motion animation, it would have taken 15,080,330 pieces.
8. The "Where Are My Pants?" running gag parodied How I Met Your Mother. Phil Lord and Chris Miller were writers and executive producers for the show's first season.
Warner Bros. Pictures / Via youtube.com
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Tiffani Thiessen Reunited With "Saved By The Bell" Co-Star Elizabeth Berkley To Teach Her How To Cook
And our weird childhood and food dreams all came true together.
Kelly Kapowski And Jessie Spano: Our dream '90s girl crushes.
NBC Productions
~Seriously~
NBC Productions
And we know they're still friends thanks to their Saved By The Bell reunion on Jimmy Fallon's The Tonight Show last month.
NBC
But now just the girls have reunited again <3
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Essence Festival Adds Huge Stars To An Already Stacked Lineup
Music make you lose control.
This year's Essence Festival lineup -- the 21st annual-- is already full-on bonkers, and they've managed to make it even better somehow. Already confirmed were...
Kendrick Lamar, Kevin Hart, Mary J Blige, India.Arie, Trombone Shorty, Floetry, Common, Erykah Badu, Kool Moe Dee, Doug E. Fresh, Mystikal, Slick Rick, and many more.
Christopher Polk / Getty Images
Jason Merritt / Getty Images
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24 Questions Britain Has For The US
It seems you guys have been rather busy since 1776. We have some questions.
First up, must you always be so patriotic?
It makes us uncomfortable. We prefer quiet shame.
Via imgur.com
And why would anyone live somewhere where it gets THIS cold?
-24ºF is -31ºC. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.
Via imgur.com
Why do so many people give this guy such a hard time?
BuzzFeed
You have no idea how lucky you are...
Wpa Pool / Getty Images
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23 Kids Who Are Completely Bossing World Book Day
“A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest” – C.S. Lewis.
These two, from Roald Dahl's The Twits.
This White Rabbit from Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland.
Plus there's the Mad Hatter...
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A Koala Took A Stroll Down A Street In Australia Because It Could
They see me rollin’, they hatin’.
This is the moment a koala was spotted strolling through the local shopping strip in Portland, Victoria.
Chris Kerrigan told the Daily Mail that she was having a cup of coffee when she noticed the furry friend coming her way, so she whipped out her phone and hit record.
But the cutest moment comes when a little boy wants to take a picture and the koala happily stops and poses.
After a short time, the koala took off, crossing the street and climbing up a tree.
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A Woman Was Reunited With Her Birth Mother After This Photo Went Viral On Facebook
The photo was shared more than 100,000 times.
After searching for eight years, a woman was finally reunited with her birth mother after this photo was shared more than 100,000 times on Facebook:
Cavendish / Cavendish Press
Sadly, Lee had little luck with her search, so she decided to do something unconventional: She uploaded the photo of her sign on to Facebook in a last-ditch attempt to find her mother.
Anthony Moss / Cavendish Press
After just 20 hours, a woman who claimed to be Lee's cousin messaged her after seeing the photo and put her in touch with her birth mother.
Cavendish / Cavendish Press
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These Snapchats Of SkyMall Catalogs Are Absolutely Perfect
Guys, we only have a few months left to enjoy the insanity that is SkyMall.
Thomas Sanders / Via hellyeahthomassanders.tumblr.com
Thomas Sanders / Via hellyeahthomassanders.tumblr.com
Thomas Sanders / Via hellyeahthomassanders.tumblr.com
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Kim Kardashian Has Just Accidentally Revealed Her New Blonde Hair
This is a fail of epic proportions.
Kim Kardashian arrived in Paris yesterday wearing a gigantic beanie which is the most un-Kim Kardashian accessory we've ever seen.
Splash News
However, stepping out in Paris this morning, she seems to have accidentally given the game away after parts of her blonde hair were visible from at the sides of her hat.
Splash News
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8 Women Talk About Sexism In Geek Culture
Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed
"I remember having a reader phone me up to tell me his masturbatory fantasies about me. I passed him over to a male colleague who just shouted at him until he quaveringly went away and never phoned again. I imagine it would have been much harder for me had Twitter and Facebook been around back then." – Rhianna Pratchett, a games writer best known for her reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise
"I’ve been called 'fragrant'. And [when I engage with climate sceptics] I get called 'naive' a lot, which male scientists at my career stage don’t, even though they say and do similar things. I’ve also been told by this crowd that I only talk to sceptics because I’m 'flattered' by their praise – again, the male climate scientists are never told this." Tamsin Edwards, climate physicist
"At one uni, if I walked through the Senior Common Room with a skirt, I’d be stared at – more as an oddity than in a sexual way. At another uni, where being a woman wasn’t weird, I’d catch colleagues properly leering at my breasts or legs." – Alice Bell, science writer and academic
Tracy King
"My favourite example is the guy who, after a brief meeting at an event in the USA at which my then-husband was also present, emailed me to say 'you know we were both thinking it: You, me and a hotel'.
"At the same event, another guy reached over and stroked my leg, completely out of the blue, while my husband’s back was turned." Tracy King, a writer working in games and animation and the producer of the Tim Minchin animated movie Storm
"Intelligent but socially awkward men seem to have created this narrative of 'Why can’t I get a girl? I deserve a girl. Therefore girls must be deliberately avoiding me. Therefore girls are evil.'
"Gamergate is obviously a horrific example of that. But it’s not like the rest of society is sexism-free." A psychologist who wants to remain anonymous
"It started to fall apart around 2002-3. Tech conferences began to fill up with smart-casual men. There were nods to women at tech conferences, but only as oddities in what was clearly seen as a man’s domain. So rather than have a lot of female speakers talking about their research, there was a spate of ‘women in technology’ panel discussions, ghettoising women into one hour that people would miss in order to network in the foyer.
"The most infuriating ‘women in technology’ panel I saw had a fashion model on the panel, who was there, as far as I could ascertain, because she used a mobile phone." A well-known tech writer who wishes to remain anonymous.
Jamie Broadnax
"I get mansplained at least once a day.
"Whenever I discuss a topic like comic books or gaming, there will always be a man who feels the need to inject himself into the discussion and correct me.
"I’m not going to say I’m always right, because I’m not. But I know what I am talking about and do not need to be corrected simply because you feel you are more of an expert than I am." Jamie Broadnax, the author of the blog Black Girl Nerds
"I worked at one company where everyone but me was asked to attend a weekend working retreat. I was the only woman. The reason given was that I would change the tone of the weekend, and the guys’ wives wouldn’t like it if I was there. Yes, because I can’t wait to seduce your gross husbands.
"I quit the job shortly after, when it became clear that I was expected to answer the phones while the men didn’t have to. Women are better at it, apparently. Don’t strain yourselves, chaps. Must be difficult multi-tasking, thinking and ball-scratching." Tracy King
"One of the most amusing ways that sexism manifests is ‘that’s not a real game’, where the game is whatever women happen to be playing. It’s most often used against Candy Crush. If Candy Crush, which is orders of magnitude more complex than, say, chess, is not a game, then neither is Tetris or Space Invaders.
"Now I’m old and jaded, I don’t care one whit about admitting that I’m crap at twin-stick shooters and find FIFA dull as hell. That’s not because I have ovaries, though, it’s because I am a human with a diverse range of skills and interests and some things interest me more than others." Tracy King
"I blame Facebook. I know, I know, correlation doesn’t equal causation, but by the time Facebook had really taken hold in 2007, geek culture as I experienced it turned into college boys getting their nobs out and belching a lot while shouting 'get your tits out for the lads'. This frat-boy attitude seemed to permeate every part of geek culture like a bad smell." Tech writer
"There have been lots of occasions when colleagues have attempted to take me less seriously, regardless of academic or professional credentials. As the old cartoon goes, 'that’s an excellent suggestion, Miss Triggs; perhaps one of the men would like to make it?' To combat this I’ve developed a loud voice and aggressive vocabulary, which is deeply unladylike of me. What a fucking shame." Tracy King
"It’s as much a symptom of the internet and social media as it is a problem with gaming culture. We can reach people in a way that we never could before, and we don’t always use that power wisely. It’s accessibility without empathy." Rhianna Pratchett
Rhianna Pratchett.
Kimmo Mäntylä / Rex / REX USA
"I think a thing that’s happening with geek culture that’s really toxic is how accepting some places are of the sexism and racism. Not all nerd spaces are like that, but a lot are. When women and people of colour started critiquing a lot of the things produced by geekdom, there was this immediate, extreme pushback." De Ana
"These problems exist in any male-dominated group, because there’s a big crossover with geek culture and the internet, we’re probably just more aware of it. Geeks didn’t invent misogyny or oppression or rape and death threats. Heck, I have some of those on good old-fashioned paper, shoved through my letterbox by a stalker. Nothing new under the sun." Tracy King
"The gatekeeping and sense of entitlement that is happening within geek culture is incredibly problematic. Geeks were once considered a marginalised group. They were 'the other', outside mainstream pop culture.
"But when the term 'nerd' was first coined in the 50s it referred specifically to white males. Now that geek culture has become diverse, it’s seen as a threat to many white males, who adopted this culture back when it first started." Jamie Broadnax
Alice Bell
"A macho and/or sexist approach to science really limits your scope — it skews research. I really struggled to get people to take my research on kids’ books seriously – people would actually go 'aww, sweet', the patronising sods – whereas if I said I was working on chemical warfare I’d be treated seriously. Similarly, I’d get told that learning about the media was ‘soft skills'.
"If you think kids’ books are sweet and the media is soft, fine, but you are dismissing some key parts of human life. And your understanding of the world is limited because of that. Sexism is blinkered, if nothing else. And science shouldn’t be blinkered." Alice Bell
"People always either assume that I’m brand new to comics or video games, or that I only know about the female and characters of colour and nothing else. It’s annoying, because a lot of the people who feel the need to grill me about the history of [insert white male comic book character here] don’t even know who a lot of the female and of-colour characters from comics are.
"They’re allowed to be selective and they’re real geeks, but if I look for something that represents me, I’m obviously faking it? That doesn’t make any sense.
"The condescension and the microaggressions have become something I expect. It feels like white male geeks don’t get the same third degree I and other women-of-colour geeks get. There’s always this assumption that we’re new, or that we just got into comics or video games or sci-fi or whatever after geek culture became more of a pop culture thing, which isn’t true in the least bit." De Ana of the podcast Nerdgasm Noire
Thinkstock
"The 'fake girl geek' trope is still present in geek circles. Men do not take us seriously because we are women, and do not feel that we are authentically into various fandoms, while whites do not feel black people are a part of geek culture, due to white supremacist ideals of what it is to be black." Jamie Broadnax
"The great thing about geeks of colour being able to talk to one another with the internet and conventions is that a lot of creative folks are coming up with ideas for so many things that are influenced by their own cultures and experiences. It gets kind of monotonous reading the same Tolkienesque fantasy, or playing the same scruffy white dude in video games." De Ana
Tamsin Edwards.
Cern
"I’ve received tweets calling me a 'dumb bitch' and 'princess', asking if I want babies or if I’m 'damaged goods'. I’ve had emails calling me a 'bright young bimbo' and saying that the physics went 'right over my proverbially pretty [head]'. Tamsin Edwards
"People have to accept that women and people of colour are not taking anything away from geek culture. We’re adding to it. We’re adding our images, our cultural ideals, our lexicon, and our perspectives into the fold. Diversity should be embraced and not shunned. Our eccentricities are what make us who we are. Besides, monoliths are boring." Jamie Broadnax
Thinkstock
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