Life imitating art: The plight of Viktor Jasinski has an odd parallel with the infamous basement scene in Pulp Fiction

A Russian man who tried to rob a hair salon ended up as the victim when the female shop owner overpowered him, tied him up naked and then used him as a sex slave for three days.

-MailOnline

As more and more advertising goes online and transportation conservation becomes an increasing economic and ecological concern, what is the future fate of the infamous billboard? One proposal by Front Architects suggests turning these into lofted homes – small houses to be sure, but located in some potentially fascinating places.


-dornob

COOL KIDS CAN'T DIE

1890 Vampire hunting kit

Here is some amazing assemblage art of a used 1890s Vampire Hunting Kit. Including crucifix, stake, mallet, hatchet, German stamped letter to the mother of deceased victim, signed new testament bible by hunter Andrew Kauffman along with picture of victim, pliers, Remington derringer pistol, rosary, syringe, garlic extract, sulphur, hair from destroyed vampire, pulled fangs of destroyed vampire & holy oil.

-INSPIRE 76

"La Barbie"

On a warm morning in May a few years ago, Edgar "La Barbie" Valdez Villarreal, a drug lord who goes by the nickname La Barbie, woke up in one of the houses he owned in the resort city of Acapulco. In the 1950s, this beautiful beach town was the premier haunt of American celebrities: Frank Sinatra used to prowl the hotel lounges, Elizabeth Taylor had her third of eight weddings here, and John F. Kennedy honeymooned on the coast with Jacqueline. The glamour started to fade in the 1980s, but the city remained a popular vacation destination until a few years ago, when the Mexican cartels transformed Acapulco from a seaside paradise into one of the most violent flash points of the drug war. As chief enforcer for the town's most powerful cartel, Barbie drove the celebrities away for good and made tourists nervous about straying too far into Acapulco when their cruise ships pulled into port. He felt bad about it, a little, but that is the way of the world, he thought – eat or be eaten.

Barbie has olive skin, but his nickname comes from his good looks and green eyes. He was known for his happy-go-lucky personality, though he could turn terrifying and bloodthirsty in an instant. At 31, he still had the strong, raw body of the linebacker he had been in high school: five feet 10, 210 pounds. Barbie kept a glass case at home filled with 60 Rolexes and diamond-studded Audemars Piguets, but unlike most narcos, he didn't grow a beard or wear flashy gold jewelry. He preferred to dress like a sophisticated South American on holiday, favoring polo jerseys with an emblem of a horseman and a stick, the kind that real Argentine jockeys wear. In fact, the myth of Barbie looms so large in Mexico that his addiction to the shirts started what's known as the Narco Polo trend, with working-class Mexicans clamoring to buy knockoff versions in street stalls.

-Rolling Stone

L'étrange déclaration d'amour du vieillissant Jim Carrey

Étonnante vidéo que celle postée par Jim Carrey sur son site officiel. Le comédien y déclare en effet sa flamme à l'actrice Emma Stone. On pourrait d'abord croire à une vidéo marketing annonçant une future collaboration entre les deux acteurs, mais non, Jim Carrey et Emma Stone n'ont pour l'instant aucun projet cinématographique en commun. Il semble donc que l'acteur soit très sérieux lorsqu'il avoue être amoureux d'Emma Stone. "Si j'étais plus jeune je t'épouserais. Et nous aurions de petits enfants joufflus avec des taches de rousseur, nous ririons toute la journée, nous irions camper." Jim Carrey manie certes l'humour mais on sent dans ses mots et ses intonations une réelle prise de conscience du vieillissement : "J'ai 49 ans et des rides sur le visage, ma barbe est un peu grise, et je mets beaucoup plus de temps qu'avant pour pisser".


-YouTube

The Killing Fields

The skyrocketing market value of yarchagumba, a rare fungus prized as an aphrodisiac, has led to turf wars—and possibly murder.

-Outside

15 minutes d'activité par jour, c'est mieux que rien!

Ne vous inquiétez pas si vous ne parvenez pas aux 30 minutes d'activités physiques recommandées chaque jour. Plusieurs études ont démontré qu'un quart d'heure seulement pourrait être bénéfique pour la santé.

-Cyberpresse

L'Impact défait les Stars 2-0

Un doublé du milieu de terrain Sinisa Ubiparipovic a permis à l'Impact de Montréal de signer une troisième victoire consécutive par jeu blanc, cette fois par la marque de 2-0 face aux Stars du Minnesota, samedi.

-Cyberpresse

L'Impact doit aussi savoir voyager

Après avoir remporté trois de ses cinq derniers matchs, tous disputés au stade Saputo, l'Impact va devoir poursuivre cette embellie sur les pelouses adverses. Afin d'y arriver et ainsi se qualifier pour les séries, il devra faire beaucoup mieux que les quatre petits points récoltés lors des 10 premiers matchs à l'extérieur.

-Cyberpresse

The Saddest Movie in the World

In 1979, director Franco Zeffirelli remade a 1931 Oscar-winning film called The Champ, about a washed-up boxer trying to mount a comeback in the ring. Zeffirelli’s version got tepid reviews. The Rotten Tomatoes website gives it only a 38 percent approval rating. But The Champ did succeed in launching the acting career of 9-year-old Ricky Schroder, who was cast as the son of the boxer. At the movie’s climax, the boxer, played by Jon Voight, dies in front of his young son. “Champ, wake up!” sobs an inconsolable T.J., played by Schroder. The performance would win him a Golden Globe Award.

It would also make a lasting contribution to science. The final scene of The Champ has become a must-see in psychology laboratories around the world when scientists want to make people sad.

-Smithsonian

Facebook, le réseau antisocial

Il existe d’innombrables moyens de faire en sorte de se sentir minable. En voici une de plus, selon une étude de Stanford : croire que vous êtes seul dans votre malheur. L'article «Le malheur est une chose plus partagée que les gens le ne pensent», paru dans le numéro du mois de janvier de la revue Personnality and Social Psychology Bulletin, s’appuie sur une série d’études portant sur la manière dont les étudiants évaluent leur humeur et celle des autres.

-Slate

Badass of the Week: Joseph Lozito

It's 8:45am on the morning of Saturday, February 12, 2011. A 40 year-old man named Joseph Lozito is riding the New York City Subway to work at his 40-hour a week gig in the box office of Manhattan's Avery Fisher Hall. He's nearing Penn Station on the final leg of his retardedly long commute from his home in Philadelphia – a two-hour pilgrimage he readily undertakes every day as a way to help provide food and a roof for his wife and two young sons. A ridiculous trip that makes pretty much everyone else who complains about their commute look like total pussies. A trip he's been taking five days a week since 2005.

-Badass of the Week

Associated Press Sept 11 Photo Package

-CRYPTOME

The Pursuit of Happiness

We all want to be happy. The question is, how? As philosopher John Stuart Mill pointed out: ”Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.”

Certainly, this holds truth, as anyone who has become preoccupied with the question can attest. Yet the question must be asked. After all, we are given this one life as we know it, and to spend it unhappily seems a terrible waste.

-Parallax

Generation F*cked

The UN’s first ever report on the state of childhood in the industrialized West made unpleasant reading for many of the world’s richest nations. But none found it quite so hard to swallow as the Brits, who, old jokes about English cooking aside, discovered that they were eating their own young.

According to the Unicef report, which measured 40 indicators of quality of life – including the strength of relationships with friends and family, educational achievements and personal aspirations, and exposure to drinking, drug taking and other risky behavior – British children have the most miserable upbringing in the developed world. American children come next, second from the bottom.

-Adbusters

The Researchers Who Analyzed All the Porn on the Internet

Searching all the porn on the Internet might not seem like the most scientifically productive activity, but computational neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam did it anyway.

For their new book, A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire, Ogas and Gaddam analyzed the results of 400 million online searches for porn and uncovered some startling insights into what men and women may really want from each other — at least sexually. I spoke recently with Ogas.

-Time

The Power of Lonely

You hear it all the time: We humans are social animals. We need to spend time together to be happy and functional, and we extract a vast array of benefits from maintaining intimate relationships and associating with groups. Collaborating on projects at work makes us smarter and more creative. Hanging out with friends makes us more emotionally mature and better able to deal with grief and stress.

Spending time alone, by contrast, can look a little suspect. In a world gone wild for wikis and interdisciplinary collaboration, those who prefer solitude and private noodling are seen as eccentric at best and defective at worst, and are often presumed to be suffering from social anxiety, boredom, and alienation.

-Boston.com

Possession ou positionnement?

Un été tumultueux s'achève pour l'Impact, mais l'automne est ordinairement synonyme d'espoir au stade Saputo. Partout dans l'organisation, on ne demande pas mieux que d'enfin laisser derrière nous cette longue période d'inertie sur la pelouse ainsi qu'au classement général.

-Cyberpresse

L'Impact l'emporte 2-0 sur les Stars

Des buts de Ryan Pore (45e minute) et d'Eduardo Sebrango (83e minute) ont permis à l'Impact de Montréal de remporter un deuxième match consécutif par jeu blanc, cette fois par la marque de 2-0 face au Stars du Minnesota, samedi, au Stade Saputo.

-Cyberpresse

Une virilité à la bonne place

La virilité est-elle compatible avec la sauce crémeuse (comme dans «traditionnelle ou crémeuse»?), me suis-je demandé après la lecture du «Spécial Hommes» du dernier magazine L'actualité. La question est à peine moins sérieuse que les 100 habiletés de l'homo quebecus décrites dans la même livraison.

-Le Devoir

Church in a tree

This is Chêne Chappelle, a large tree holding a small church in the French village of Allouville-Bellefosse. Today, worshippers entered the tree for the Assumption of the Virgin.

-boingboing

Paintings inspired by paused VHS tapes

Swiss artist Andy Denzler creates paintings that are designed to look like the fuzzy image of a paused VHS recording.

-Wired

BROKERS WITH HANDS ON THEIR FACES

Ce n'est pas parce que l'énorme soufflé au fromage médiatique sur la situation boursière actuelle s'est dégonflé d'un coup que tout s'est arrangé en quelques jours. Au contraire, pas mal de courtiers se mangent encore les doigts, du moins on l'imagine aisément. Brokers With Hands On Their Faces se fait l'écho de ces individualités meurtries par la situation.

Montréal MLS 2012

Virtual Venue de l'Impact de Montréal.

Pierre COUCHE avec son ALLIGATOR

The Surprising Science of a One-Night Stand

Did that woman from the bar get a little too cuddly the other evening? Didn't exactly offer the kind of lip service you were expecting, did she? A fairly serious new study — one that actually contains the words "booty call" in its title — breaks down what's missing in your sex life, and how to compromise.

-Esquire

Convaincante victoire de l'Impact

Profitant des largesses des Silverbacks d'Atlanta, l'Impact a conclu sa séquence de trois matchs en huit jours par une convaincante victoire de 4-0, dimanche, devant une foule annoncée de 11 136 spectateurs au stade Saputo.

Comme mercredi face au FC Tampa Bay, l'Impact a inscrit trois buts au cours d'une même mi-temps. Sauf qu'après une première période maîtrisée de bout en bout, le club montréalais n'a, cette fois, pas été inquiété par la pire formation de la NASL.

-Cyberpresse

A Few Good Kids?

John Travers was striding purposefully into the Westfield mall in Wheaton, Maryland, for some back-to-school shopping before starting his junior year at Bowling Green State University. When I asked him whether he'd ever talked to a military recruiter, Travers, a 19-year-old African American with a buzz cut, a crisp white T-shirt, and a diamond stud in his left ear, smiled wryly. "To get to lunch in my high school, you had to pass recruiters," he said. "It was overwhelming." Then he added, "I thought the recruiters had too much information about me. They called me, but I never gave them my phone number."

Nor did he give the recruiters his email address, Social Security number, or details about his ethnicity, shopping habits, or college plans. Yet they probably knew all that, too. In the past few years, the military has mounted a virtual invasion into the lives of young Americans. Using data mining, stealth websites, career tests, and sophisticated marketing software, the Pentagon is harvesting and analyzing information on everything from high school students' GPAs and SAT scores to which video games they play. Before an Army recruiter even picks up the phone to call a prospect like Travers, the soldier may know more about the kid's habits than do his own parents.

-Mother Jones

Do you really want to live forever?

Science is striving to reverse the ageing process so we can all live longer, but that does come with its drawbacks, says Joan Bakewell in A Point of View.

Last week scientists at Harvard medical school reversed the ageing process in elderly mice. Please don't get excited, unless you're a mouse that is. The application to humans is a long way off and even if it will one day be possible, there are many issues attendant on a population that has the means to live forever.

-BBC News