Awesome Learning

There was a time when cartoons were created mostly for kids, but these days, some of the best satire out there turns up in animation. Video essayist Will Schoder opines on why it’s often easier to poke fun at society’s foibles in cartoon form rather than live action.

We’ve featured many slow-mo videos, and while most of them were dubbed with music, some attempt to replicate the sounds of the object being recorded. SmarterEveryDay explains how they create these noises and match them up to the otherwise silent footage.

Half as Interesting shares an apparent paradox about names. Studies have shown that we can match names to strangers 30% of the time, which means we look like our names. But since we’re named before we even plan our lives, it seems that we live up to our names.

Kurzgesagt wraps up 2017 with a follow up to its fascinating clip about the relationship between an organism’s size and the way it evolves. This time out, we learn how we might actually explode if we weren’t the size we were meant to be. Say, was that Barb at 1:30?

You can now take advantage of Grammarly’s helpful grammar- and spell-checking features on iOS and Android devices, thanks to the free Grammarly keyboard. Grammarly Premium users will also be able to see suggestions for style and vocabulary enhancements.

While you might automatically say something like “Flight of the Bumblebee,” the notion of what music is the most challenging to perform is really a subjective concept, and must be contextualized to the skillset of its performer, as music essayist Adam Neely explains.

(PG-13) On the surface, the eponymous star of FXX’s Archer may seem like a hyperbolic version of James Bond. But as Wisecrack points out, much of the show’s humor actually lies on turning 007’s escapist maverick image on its head.

“No chaos dammit.” The Art Assignment made this great overview of Jackson Pollock and his divisive drip paintings. He wasn’t the first to do it, nor will he be the last. But the timing and coverage of his short-lived peak marked a new level for abstract expressionism.

(PG-13: Language) Complex’s new show Jobs Unlisted is about uncommon professions. In its first episode, host Speedy Morman visited Pensole Footwear Design Academy to learn about designing sneakers. Eustace stayed up all night for you Speedy. Show some gratitude.

Video cameras move in six basic ways: pan, tilt, roll, push (or pull), track and crane. They can be combined, performed at different speeds, and cut into each other. But each one is rich enough on its own. CineFix presents its picks for the best use of each basic movement.

There is growing evidence that giving citizens (or at least the poor) a stipend will make people healthier and happier without tanking the economy or productivity. But it can also be abused – not just by lazy or entitled individuals, but by governments and businesses as well.

The older you get, the more the years coalesce into one blob we call “the past.” But Mental Floss wants us to know exactly how ancient we’ve become with this list of things that happened or started 21 years ago, including Google, Space Jam, and A Song of Ice and Fire.

TierZoo finally gets around to the kings of the current meta. Primates prove that to reign supreme, you shouldn’t max one skill. Instead, you should have lots of great skills and traits. You know who’s at the top of the game. At least until the next expansion.

Serial learner Mike Boyd decided to take on a silly but tough to acquire skill: learning to break glass with one’s voice. Step 1: get something made out of crystal glass. Step 2: protect your eyes. Step 3: WUUUUEEEE

“But oh, to be free… to be my own master.” ScreenPrism argues that Aladdin has a nice message about freedom. The heroes each have different kinds of freedom. In the end, they learn that to maximize their own freedom, they should help others be more free as well.

If you’ve ever seen a glacier up close and personal, you know they’re a beautiful blue-green color that’s unlike just about any ice or water you’ve ever witnessed. It’s Okay to Be Smart reveals the science behind what we see, then gives us a 360º view inside an ice cave.

While there have long been promises by space agencies that they would build a manned base on the moon, it has never come to pass. Life Noggin explains why the Earth-orbiting satellite that we first landed on in the 1960s has proven so difficult to colonize and sustain life.

Alex French Guy Cooking is addicted to instant ramen. He thought of four different ways to have instant ramen broth on hand, either as a powdered mixture or as a cube. Two of the recipes take only 5 minutes or less, while the other two take several hours.

Life Where I’m From created a brief history of Japan’s public baths. He also talked about why they remain popular despite bathtubs becoming commonplace, and an overview of onsens and other kinds of public baths that you might want to check out when you visit Japan.

Mike Boyd recently passed a milestone: 500,000 YouTube subscribers. To celebrate, he figured he’d learn how to lop off the top of a champagne bottle with a saber. It’s surprisingly easy to figure out, but you should still practice before trying it on expensive champagne.

A fluidized bed is a mixture of a solid and a fluid that behaves like a fluid. To show us how it works, Mark Rober mixed sand with bursts of air – when the air is piped in, the sand behaves like it’s a fluid. Just for kicks, he also made a larger bed using a discarded hot tub.

It’s not too hard to travel faster than sound, but amping things up to the speed of light is a whole other level. Life Noggin pontificates on the what might happen if we could exceed 186,000 miles per second. The whole slowing down light thing seems like a cheat though.

Nearly all movies have smaller stories embedded around and within their main story. Lessons from the Screenplay uses the wonderful biopic Hidden Figures to show how subplots enhance the main plot when executed properly.