Lucid Dreaming

A lucid dream is any dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming. In a lucid dream, the dreamer may be able to exert some degree of control over their participation within the dream or be able to manipulate their imaginary experiences in the dream environment.^[2] Lucid dreams can be realistic and vivid.

-HighExsistence

Simply having a wonderfully awkward Christmas time! Festive family photos that’ll make even the worst scrooge laugh out loud

Childhood friends Mike and Doug started the blog after Mike noticed an awkward vacation photo hanging in his parents’ house, according to the site’s about page.

The two friends then decided to create a site where people could come together and share their uncomfortable family moments.

-Mail Online

Censored and "Recalled" Album Covers

Despite being awarded with the enviable Best Album Cover award from Playboy magazine, this cover was considered too sticky for American eyes.

-Houston Press

The Children Who Went Up In Smoke

For nearly four decades, anyone driving down Route 16 near Fayetteville, West Virginia, could see a billboard bearing the grainy images of five children, all dark-haired and solemn-eyed, their names and ages—Maurice, 14; Martha 12; Louis, 9; Jennie, 8; Betty, 5—stenciled beneath, along with speculation about what happened to them.

-Smithsonian

Mind and Brain

Everything you wanted - or didn't want - to know about your mind. From how we make memories and how many friends we can cope with, to zombie brains and learning from psychopaths.

-The Browser

The Woes of an American Drone Operator

For more than five years, Brandon Bryant worked in an oblong, windowless container about the size of a trailer, where the air-conditioning was kept at 17 degrees Celsius (63 degrees Fahrenheit) and, for security reasons, the door couldn't be opened. Bryant and his coworkers sat in front of 14 computer monitors and four keyboards. When Bryant pressed a button in New Mexico, someone died on the other side of the world.

-Spiegel

The World of a Professional Naked Girl

About a month ago, I was daydreaming at work and a bunch of random memories flooded into my mind. One in particular was this flash of me and an ex-gf from long ago, hanging out in the living room of the apartment we shared. I remembered how this girl, who was a dancer of sorts, could just do these faces and body movements out of nowhere, just in passing, as something intended to be a joke, that would floor me. I've always wondered how some ladies can turn this fountain of sheer, gun blast sexy power on and off, aiming it at exactly who they want, when they want. I asked my new friend, well-known artist and professional sexy lady, Molly Crabapple, to try and make sense of the ramblings I wrote her one day, and this is what she came up with.

-Vice

Love's big secret? Play hard to get

That's the strategy used by both men and women to test a potential partner's commitment, claims new research.

Treat them mean, goes the adage, and keep them keen. Now it emerges that such power play – used by men and women – is a sound evolutionary strategy to get a good mate.

-The Independent

Four hours with John McAfee

Exclusive interview with multi-millionaire creator of antivirus software, who went on the run from his Belize home last month.

-FT Magazine

Bizarre Court Battle over Duff Beer Trademark

Germany's Duff Beer UG has long shown itself to be a formidable foe in the courtroom, taking on all comers in defending its right to brew Homer Simpson's favorite beer. On Thursday, however, the company lost a battle to gain the sole trademark to the name -- meaning Germany will continue to have two Duff beers.

-Spiegel

ANATOMY of a SAILOR (POPEYE)

Popeye the Sailor Man… Toot toot! Here's the story of how he was born and other cool Popeye stuff. Elzie Segar and told him to create a comic strip called "Thimble Theater." That's all the guidance he had; the rest was up to him. He came up with a weird bunch of characters. A gawky old maid named Olive Oyl, her boyfriend Ham Gravy, her loopy brother Castor Oyl, and her parents Cole and Nana Oyl.

-Goodstuff

Most Popular How-To Guides of 2012

Some of the best and most interesting topics we cover here at Lifehacker are our how-to guides: Those posts that take you through a project step by step and leave you at the end having completed something you've always wanted to do. Here's a look back at our most popular how-to features of 2012.

-Lifehacker

Toques from Underground, The rise of the secret supper club

For the past two years, in a loft apartment in downtown Los Angeles, Craig Thornton has been conducting an experiment in the conventions of high-end American dining. Several nights a week, a group of sixteen strangers gather around his dining-room table to eat delicacies he has handpicked and prepared for them, from a meticulously considered menu over which they have no say. It is the toughest reservation in the city: when he announces a dinner, hundreds of people typically respond.

-The New Yorker

A Complete History Of Gerbiling So Far

The act of gerbiling, according to the Internet, is simple. In most instances, it involves a tube up the ass, followed by a gerbil up that tube. Some accounts suggest that the gerbil should be declawed as a safety precaution, but the main gist is to have the gerbil burrowing around one's anus long enough to bring about sexual pleasure. One might lure the gerbil up the tube with a piece of cheese, or, inversely, light a flame under the funnel to send the gerbil scurrying.

-Readability/The AWL

Blame affairs on evolution of sex roles

Tolerance for male adultery is certainly at a new low. In letters and diaries written during the Colonial and Revolutionary eras, men routinely bragged about their extramarital conquests -- even to the brothers and fathers of their own wives! In the 1850s, it is estimated that New York City had one prostitute for every 64 men, while the mayors of Savannah, Georgia, and Norfolk, Virginia, put the numbers of prostitutes in their cities at one for every 39 and 26 men, respectively.

Part of it is probably a sense of entitlement. Powerful men have "people" to take care of the mundane details of life. They are briefed on the names and backgrounds of whomever they meet, told when it's time to leave, and extricated from awkward encounters. Someone else keeps track of appointments, money and time, fetches whatever they have forgotten at home, makes excuses when they change plans, and picks up after them when they leave a room. No wonder they get careless about picking up after their indiscretions as well.

-CNN

Learning from Psychopaths: Q&A With Psychologist Kevin Dutton

It’s too simplistic to think of psychopaths as being murderers or law-breakers, says Oxford psychologist Kevin Dutton.

In his new book, The Wisdom of Psychopaths, Dutton examines what we can learn from those who lack conscience but are also bold and highly resilient to stress.

What exactly is a psychopath?

No sooner is the word out of someone’s mouth  than images of [serial killers] like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer come to mind. It doesn’t automatically mean that you’re a criminal or serial killer.  When psychologists talk about psychopaths, what we refer to are people with a distinct set of personality characteristics including ruthlessness,  fearlessness, mental toughness, a charismatic personality and lack of conscience and empathy.

-Readability/Time

Philip Roth Retires: 10 Lessons from the Professor of Desire

Like many people, I was saddened when it was publicized that Philip Roth had quietly announced his retirement in an interview with a French magazine. By chance, the news came near the end of a year during which my attitude toward Roth changed from appreciation to obsession. Before 2012, I had read perhaps 10 of Roth’s books in a decade. This year, I read 15 Roth novels in a row, the literary equivalent of binge-watching multiple seasons of a serial television drama. The more I read, the more I appreciated how Roth writes not only with technical virtuosity and aesthetic mastery, but also with profound spiritual intent.

-Readabiliy/The Millions 

You Missed It: Most Unfairly Overlooked Movies Of The Decade

When people look back on the early years of the new millennium they'll remember it for movies like The Dark Knight and Lord of the Rings. Or they'll geek out with their friends about the cult classics they discovered together, rewatching copies of the original version of Donnie Darko or spreading around copies of Idiocracy and laughing at its accuracy. Or we'll remember the prestige movies, the big Oscar winners like No Country For Old Men and Chicago.

But in a better world, maybe we'd remember these movies. These are the other guys, the great films you missed through circumstance or stupidity, through studio stumbling or simply bad timing.

-Cinema Blend

Tokyo: The World’s Most Uncomfortable Commute

Tokyo is world-famous for its urban density, so it’s no surprise that the legendarily packed city subways would capture photographer Michael Wolf’s imagination.

-Slate

The sex issue: Is monogamy dead?

There are about 4,000 mammal species on Earth, but only a few dozen form lifelong monogamous pair bonds. The bonobo chimpanzees of Congo, for instance, eschew monogamy because they use sex as a social activity to develop and maintain bonds with male and female chimps. And monogamy is hardly the norm for humans.

-The Long Good Read

Secrets, Schemes, and Lots of Guns: Inside John McAfee’s Heart of Darkness

As dawn broke over the interior of Belize on April 30, an elite team of 42 police and soldiers, including members of the country's SWAT team and Special Forces, converged on a compound on the banks of a jungle river. Within, all was quiet. The police called out through a bullhorn that they were there looking for illegal firearms and narcotics, then stormed in, breaking open doors with sledgehammers, handcuffing four security guards, and shooting a guard dog dead. The compound's owner, a 67-year-old white American man, emerged bleary-eyed from his bedroom with a 17-year-old Belizean girl.

-Gizmodo

Corn Maze Craze: Get Lost in Halloween Horror Fields Before Harvest

Happy October! Before harvest, and popular in autumn around Halloween, fall festivals kick off a corn maze craze. Called maize mazes in the United Kingdom and labyrinths in Europe, corn mazes are a great way for farms to create income from tourism. This competition factor among Halloween fields of horror are also why these puzzles carved into the corn grow increasingly complex each year.

-Love These Pics

Times Square like you’ve never seen it before: Amazing images capture the Crossroads of the World from 1904 to modern days

Whenever someone mentions New York City in passing, Times Square is almost always the first thing that comes to mind.The bustling Crossroads of the World, the pulsating core of the Big Apple lit in myriads of neon lights has been drawing tourists from around the world like a magnet for nearly a century.

-Daily Mail

The models for American Gothic, Nan Wood Graham and Byron McKeeby, 1930.

Psychopathy's Double Edge

Over a 28-year-old single-malt scotch at the Scientific Study of Psychopathy's biennial bash in Montreal in 2011, I asked Bob Hare, "When you look around you at modern-day society, do you think, in general, that we're becoming more psychopathic?"

-The Chronicle