Smack that ham. Read the rest

This is my new favorite holiday video, forever. Read the rest

One of the two women suspected of assassinating Kim Jong-un's brother wore a shirt with "LOL" written on it.

CCTV images released by Malaysian authorities show the suspects lurking in Kuala Lumpur airport; reports variously have them using needles or a spray to poison Kim Jong-nam, who died en-route to hospital.

In a scene out of a James Bond film, the toxic spray-wielding femme fatales targeted 45-year-old Jong Nam – the globetrotting black sheep of his North Korean ruling class family — in the airport’s departure hall on Monday morning.

The women – believed to be North Korean agents – unleashed the noxious fumes in the face of Jong Nam as he waited for a flight to Macau, China.

Jong Nam staggered to a receptionist, indicating that he was on the verge of passing out and suffering a mild seizure, police said.

Nam would be running the hermit kingdom but for several embarrassing episodes (such as being arrested trying to visit Tokyo Disneyland on a false passport) that saw his younger brother rise in their now-dead father's eyes.

Assassin targeting Kim Jong Un’s half-brother wore ‘LOL’ shirt [New York Post] Read the rest

Would it be a fitting end, for one of the first and greatest of the American web's dreams, to be eaten by the most infamous of British tabloids?

The parent company of the Daily Mail, the British newspaper and global tabloid website, is in talks with several private-equity firms to launch a bid for Yahoo, the people said. ... A possible bid by Daily Mail could take one of two forms, the people familiar with the matter said. In one scenario, a private-equity partner would aim to acquire the entirety of Yahoo’s U.S. operation, with the Mail taking over the news and media properties. Those assets include verticals such as Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports plus Yahoo News and a video operation whose big star is Katie Couric. Yahoo has been retrenching in those businesses—in February the company closed seven digital magazines including sites dedicated to food, parenting and health. In the other scenario, the private-equity firm would acquire Yahoo and merge its media and news properties into a new company that would include the Mail’s Web properties, DailyMail.com and Elite Daily, the people said. The Mail would run that business and would get a larger equity stake than under the first scenario.

Yahoo's core business is hard to value because of holdings in successful foreign companies such as Alibaba. At one point, its fortunes were so dire that squinting at it just right made the company seem to have negative value. More recently, an analyst put it at $4.3 billion. Read the rest

Oh, this is full of some real gems, and will very likely improve your mood. The part where the mom is trying to teach her daughter about the planets, specifically how to say “Uranus,” is my favorite. Perhaps second only to the kid who does a spot-on impression of some of my least favorite former U.S. Presidents. [AFV] Read the rest

YouTuber Beckie Lewis filmed the annual unveiling of the toilet paper holder. The Heavy Duty PaperBoy 5000 is voice-activated and was in a generous holiday spirit with its tissue dispensation. Read the rest

A paper in the British Medical Journal reviewed the literature on harms arising from laughter and produced a wide-ranging list of laughing-related dangers, from asthma attacks to cerebral tumors. The authors concluded "Laughter is not purely beneficial. The harms it can cause are immediate and dose related, the risks being highest for Homeric (uncontrollable) laughter." Read the rest

Manatees would like to remind you that it's alright. You're a good person. You just need a hug. Read the rest

A few years ago, Harriet Hall googled "The One True Cause of all disease", just to see what the Internet would come up with. She counted 67 One True Causes before she got bored (52 of them made it into the handy chart above).

Besides making for an amusing anecdote, this little exercise also helps illustrate why there's a problem with ideologically driven medical treatments — the sort that comes from people who are pushing a lifestyle or a philosophy along with ostensible healthcare. It's both intriguing and convenient to think that, if we just open the right secret door, we can find the thing that's actually causing all our problems. The truth, unfortunately, seems to be that our bodies and the world they inhabit are complicated and messy and that lots of of things can lead to disease (doctors typically learn to divide these things into nine different categories, Hall says). In fact, a disease we think of as a single entity can have its roots in more than one thing. All of this is pretty obvious but it's the kind of obvious that's worth rubbing our noses in on occasion. If somebody tells you that everything from obesity to bipolar disorder to allergies to cancer all stem from the same root and can be treated or prevented with the exact same treatment, there's probably good reason to question what they're telling you. Read the rest

Scientist sets out to determine the chemical differences between bourbon, rye, Tennessee, and other whiskeys. His name: Tom Collins. No. Seriously. Read the rest

The correct answer is that Brian and Angela just need to break up, already.

From Thanks, Textbooks — a fantastic Tumblr of supremely weird and hilarious textbook examples and questions. Read the rest

Dead Duck Day — the annual memorial celebration honoring the first recorded case of male homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck — happens this Wednesday in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The holiday will be celebrated with a speech in front of the window where one of the ducks in question met his fate, followed by a duck dinner at a local Chinese restaurant. The victim duck has been taxidermied and will be on hand for the festivities. Read the rest

Writer Darren Naish, who blogs at Tretrapod Zoology, took this photo of a Larus gull attempting to chow down on an awkwardly shaped starfish. (And, really, are there any other kind of starfish? Especially when you're trying to fit them in your mouth whole?)

You might remember Larus gulls from a recent piece I wrote on speciation and evolution. According to Naish, they might have another place in the story of evolution, as well. Regardless of how Sisyphean this gull's dinner plans may appear, Larus gulls actually (successfully) eat a lot of starfish. So many, in fact, that, as Naish explains in a recent post, they might be prompting one species of starfish to slowly turn a different color — an adaptation that makes the species less visible to gulls. Read the rest

Please enjoy this very serious, scientific Tumblr that posts exactly what it promises — pictures of the strange and fantastic creatures that live deep in the ocean ... with googly eyes photoshopped onto their bodies.

The specimen above is an animal known as the pigbutt worm. Yes, seriously. With the googly eyes in place, you can't quite get a full understanding of how weird looking this animal is, so please be sure to check out the "before" photo, as well.

The site is maintained by a deep sea ecologist (he's anonymous, but I've verified that this is true). So you can trust the information provided here. For instance, when readers ask how the heck a pigbutt worm counts as a worm:

The pigbutt worm, Chaetopterus pugaporcinus, is a very weird looking worm, for sure. All Annelid worms are segmented, and the pigbutt is no exception. If you look at an ordinary earthworm, you can see those segments, but in Chaetopterus pugaporcinus, the middle segments are super inflated compared to the rest of its body. The rear segments are visible in the area that looks like the anus on a mammal’s buttocks (although others have noted that this section of the pigbutt worm looks more like a disembodied vulva than a floating buttock).

A collection of evidence suggesting that the people who take stock photographs have absolutely no idea what the process of science looks like, beyond a vague understanding that it probably involves white coats (and also beakers full of liquid). Read the rest

Imaginary letters, in which giraffes, angora rabbits, and emperor penguins air their grievances against the forces of natural selection. Read the rest

As Matt Lynley put it, "Meanwhile, in space ..." Read the rest