Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter has introduced a set of simplified rules and a new Launch Now feature that allows project creators to skip the typical Community Manager feedback stage to launch campaigns immediately. The new set of rules has been boiled down to three main bullet points:

Projects must create something to share with others.
Projects must be honest and clearly presented.
Projects cannot fundraise for charity, offer financial incentives, or involve prohibited items.

image via Kickstarter

"Are You Alone," is an animated short by Munich design collective KurzGesagt that explores some pretty deep questions regarding the nature of human life on Earth, from our atomic structures to our deep connection to the cosmos.

The idea of being a deeply-connected, minuscule part of an enormous structure is really mind-blowing. We don't know what all this means, or if it means anything at all. We know that we're made up of little parts that connect us to the beginning of the universe. The beginning of everything.

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Shorty, the beautiful black cat of the ShoKo Show, shares the story of her deep fixation with a toy banana, seemingly in hopes of warning others about the dangers of addiction.

via Tastefully Offensive

Western Massachusetts musician Jules Conroy (a.k.a. “FamilyJules7X“) has created “Replay”, a 17-minute heavy metal tribute to the history of video games. He covers 38 games in total. Everything from the classic 1972 game Pong to the recently released Dark Soul II (2014). A full list of the games covered is available on YouTube.

via Das Filter, Nerdcore

San Francisco clothing manufacturer Betabrand has released a plaid button-down long-sleeve shirt that incorporates reflective graphite thread for increased visibility while riding your bike at night.

This is a poly-cotton shirt that by day is a mild-mannered button-down, and by night becomes brilliant, ultra-reflective shirt that exponentially increases your visibility.

The company has a line of similarly reflective products for cyclists, including a women's shirt, a dress and an infinity scarf.

via The Awesomer

Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, the renowned scientist, pharmacologist and author credited with being the “Godfather of Psychedelics” due to his synthesizing of MDMA and other psychoactive drugs, died on June 2, 2014 at his home in Northern California, surrounded by his family and his friends. He was 88 years old.

Although he didn’t invent it, Sasha first synthesized MDMA in 1965; however, he did not try it at that time. In 1976, the effects of MDMA were described to Sasha by an undergrad at San Francisco State University. Sasha was inspired to cook up a batch of the drug, which he began testing on himself in September of that year…Since that time, Sasha Shulgin synthesized and bioassayed (self-tested) hundreds of psychoactive chemicals, recording his work in five books and more than two hundred papers. He is a fixure in the psychedelic community, who has spoken at countless conferences, granted frequent interviews, and instilled a sense of rational scientific thought into the world of self-experimentation and psychoactive ingestion. – The Vaults of Erowid

Rest in peace Sasha. You’ve left the world a better place.

photo by Jon Hanna, via The Vaults of Erowid

via The Vaults of Erowid

“Today Was a Good Day (On the Internet)” is an amusing animated parody by Animation Domination High-Def (ADHD) of the song “It Was a Good Day” by Ice Cube featuring revised lyrics about the Internet and the vocal talent of Colton Dunn.

Ice Cube had his good day on January 20, 1992. We had one, too. One good day on the net.

“It's a Bird” is a strange little stop-motion animated short directed by film pioneer Harold L. Muller in 1930 that features a shoe-wearing, metal-eating bird (that actually looks a fair bit like a pterodactyl) that devours a car, piece by piece. Slapstick comedian Charles R. Bowers plays an explorer who encounters both the bird and a gruff-voiced talking worm on his travels to Africa. Both the full eight-minute film posted by Scottish Television and a shorter snippet posted by turkeytv, featuring the bird and a car that hatches from an egg, can be found on YouTube.

via Boing Boing

In the latest "Quick Questions" segment by SciShow, Michael Aranda takes on the way the sun and Earth interact to create different seasons throughout the year.

No matter where you are or when you're watching this, you're never more than three months away from a change in seasons. Who do we have to blame for this? The sun, partly, and the way the Earth leans into it.

Chilean daredevil Sebastian Alvarez drops from a paraglider and uses a Vampire model wingsuit to sail through a 12-meter (39 foot) gap between two tall buildings in Reñaca, Chile in this video by Barcroft TV.

Actor Ricky Gervais and host Jimmy Fallon couldn’t help but laugh hysterically while playing a game of Word Sneak on a recent episode of The Tonight Show. During the game, Fallon and Gervais were each given cards with random words on them, such as “nip-slip” and “gerbil.” They then had to fit these words into a somewhat casual conversation. We previously wrote about a funny game of Word Sneak between Jimmy and Bryan Cranston.

Oliver Stone is set to write and direct a film based on the book The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man by journalist Luke Harding. The Snowden Files follows the story of Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing and reporting by the Guardian of his disclosures. According to Variety, the movie is scheduled to start filming before the end of the year.

The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man is currently available via Amazon.

image via Amazon

via Variety

“Obey This Film” is a short documentary by Los Angeles filmmaker Brett Novak about the art and influences of “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” creator Shepard Fairey. The artist discusses his skateboarding origins, working on the Obama "Hope" poster, and the power of street art.

The impact of stumbling upon a mural, an illegal poster or a stencil, there's a little bit of that energy of the act of defiance or the act of execution on a large scale that I think transfers to a viewer in a way that's different from the experience on the internet or in an institution.

via The World’s Best Ever

Extreme Pogo pioneer Nick McClintock and other members of the Xpogo team attached a GoPro to their pogo sticks and proceeded to capture some truly impressive jumps, flips, and a few unfortunate spills. The video was shot with a GoPro HD HERO3 and set to the instrumental “I Go” by rapper Hannibal Leq.

For his ongoing series, Saturday Morning Slow Jams, pianist Scott Bradlee and his band perform a 1990s R&B cover of the The Powerpuff Girls cartoon series theme song with vocals by Andromeda Turre, Karen Marie, and Chelsea. Their new SMSJ album, which features this song, is available to purchase online from iTunes and Loudr.

Video editor Robert Jones has created a supercut video for Tastefully Offensive that features some of “the best and most memorable catchphrases in television history.”

Google Maps has added an Easter egg featuring “dragon” as a mode of transportation from Snowdon to Brecon Beacons in Wales. According to their calculations, it would take 21 minutes by dragon to arrive.

image via Google Maps

via Google Maps, The Next Web

(larger)

Pop Chart Lab has created “Breweries of the United States 2.0,” a giant redesigned wall map that features "over 1,400 US breweries from craft to macro and everything in between." 39″ x 27″ signed and numbered prints are available to purchase online.

This 39" x 27" PCL classic has been redone from the ground up, with twice as many breweries as its progenitor and featuring an all new design celebrating the great brewers of the United States. From Sierra Nevada to Deschutes to our pals at Brooklyn Brewery, this magnificent map of malt and hops clocks in at over seven square feet.

images via Pop Chart Lab

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Pittsburgh computer scientist Tom Murphy (a.k.a. “Tom 7“) has taken all of the English dialogue from Star Wars, broke it down into single words, and then sorted them alphabetically. The end result of his labor is an incredible 43-minute re-edited video titled “ARST ARSW.”

Fun facts:
The word “lightsaber” only appears once in this film.
There are 43m5s of spoken English, 81m39s of other.
The most common word is “the”, of course, said 368 times.
The word with most screen time is “you”, at 52.56 seconds.
There are 1695 different words, and 11684 total words.
The longest words are “responsibility,” “malfunctioning”, “worshipfulness”, and “identification”, all 14 letters.

I labeled the words manually (!) using some software I wrote specifically for the purpose.

via MetaFilter

London-based artist Rob Ryan hand crafts astonishingly intricate cut paper illustrations that often feature snippets of humorous writing on love and life. His papercuts are also available as laser cut editions and on a variety of other mediums including clothing and jewelry (see his online store for more).

photos via Rob Ryan

via My Modern Metropolis