, And Other News
Did you know that William Shatner's Captain Kirk never — not once! — said "Beam me up, Scotty" in Star Trek? And in Field of Dreams? Kevin Costner is only assured that "he" will come — not "they" — once the baseball field is built. So we're bad at quotes. And not just the wording; sometimes we go and attribute quotes to people who definitely did not utter them (or anything close).
Which is all to say, don't trust the human memory. Or the power of the crowd. Just go watch Star Trek again.
If You Plagiarize Bad Jokes On Twitter, Twitter Will Delete Them
To be clear, they'll also delete good jokes that have been plagiarized — but let's be honest, most of our 140-character witticisms are bad. Whatever the quality of the joke, Twitter's new deletion policy adds another dimension to the difficult and growing conversation around copyright and appropriation on the internet.
Of course, now you can tell your parent/supervisor that you're actually studying intellectual property rights when you're fav-ing and retweeting.
There's A World Record For Semi Truck Jumping And This Guy Just Broke It
Every year, Butte, Montana holds its Evel Knievel Days festival, a three-day celebration of extreme sports. At this year's event, Nitro Circus driver Gregg Godfrey decided to set a new world record in semi truck jumping — which is apparently a thing — and did so in quite a fashion. The old record was a measly 62 feet; Goddfrey and his Knievel-themed truck managed to soar 166 terrifying feet through the Butte sky.
Dog The Bounty Hunter Is Human, After All
A man must know his limits, and famed mullet-haver Duane Chapman — aka Dog the Bounty Hunter — has admitted that escaped Mexican cartel kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is out of his bounty-hunting league. It seems that even Dog has more sense than to chase after the $3.8 million the Mexican government has offered for Guzman's capture — which is probably wise given the less-than-trustworthy status of that government.
Bitcoin Is Now Criminals' Ransom Currency Of Choice
Are you a billionaire? Is your spouse, one of your beloved children, or your cherished chihuahua being held for ransom? Better figure out how to open up a bitcoin account quick, because kidnappers are getting picky. It's a new era, and to the modern criminal the suitcase full of neatly stacked $20s is just so… traceable.
An Interactive Illustration Of Why Time Flies As You Get Older
It's well-known that time seems to go by more quickly as you get older. Your senior year of high school passes by more rapidly than first grade, and your 50th year more rapidly than your senior year of college. Maximilian Kiener put together a nifty infographic that illustrates one reason for the perceived shift: as we age, a year accounts for a smaller and smaller portion of our entire life. A simple idea, beautifully illustrated here.
Why Do Memes All Use That Same Damn Font?
Image macros aren't quite the thing they used to be, but they still pop up all over the place, and they almost uniformly use the font Impact — white, with black outline (see the vintage "Awkward Penguin" meme to the left). But why? Phil Edwards goes deep1 on the font's viral ubiquity.
Hey Look, Here's A Jet Flying Straight Upwards
After a relatively normal take-off, this Russian MiG-29 takes a sudden turn for the vertical a few seconds after liftoff and shoots through the clouds. To a person with little knowledge of or experience with fighter jets,2 it is incredibly impressive. But from a survey of the comments on our Facebook post of the video, it's also pretty cool even to people who have seen this type thing a bunch of times before. Ergo, you should watch this, no matter who you are or what your previous life experience may be.
In the news: Bobbi Kristina Brown, daughter of Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, passed away at 22 after several months on life support; the Boy Scouts are expected to end their national ban on gay troop leaders, though individual troops will still be allowed to maintain the ban; President Barack Obama visited Kenya, the first time a sitting president has done so; Chris Froome won his second Tour de France title; and Satanists unveiled a controversial statue of Baphomet in Detroit.
