Awesome Learning

You might have assumed that the use of characters to create faces was a fairly recent development, but it turns out that printed smiley- and winky-faces have been around for hundreds of years. Unless they were a typo, that is.

Smarter Every Day went to Timepiece Tattoo Company’s shop to learn about the basics of tattooing. Then at 3:15, there’s slow-motion footage of Tattoos Forever artists using multiple needles at work.

Some people believe that the original Apollo moon landing was faked. For any remaining doubters, NVIDIA used their Maxwell GPU tech to show how the lighting in the controversial photos were accurate to the real moon.

The Daily Show poked fun at the People’s Climate March, then revealed a bigger joke: the US House Committee on Science, Space & Technology, who are either ignorant or are pretending to be ignorant to protect those who pay them.

If you have a tattoo, you’re participating in one of mankind’s oldest traditions, rich with contexts both good and bad. TED-Ed presents Addison Anderson’s abridged history of tattoos, animated by Think Blot. Learn more here.

While technically, we all die the same way, depending on where you live, what will lead to your ultimate demise can vary greatly. It’s sobering that some of life’s greatest pleasures can be so deadly in parts of the world.

Need the Cliffs’ Notes for the physics lesson where they explained the difference between matter and antimatter? Minute Physics does their best to sum up this perplexing science at their usual rapid-fire pace.

(NSFW: Language) Last Week Tonight looks at the Miss America Organization, which awards scholarships to women on the condition that they parade around in swimsuits for several minutes and prove their intelligence in 20 seconds.

Vsauce looks at why we love looking for coincidences: partly because our brains our wired to look for patterns, and partly because we have so many variables to work with. Thanks + for + watching?! Half-Life 3 confirmed.

Last Week Tonight gives us a primer on the potentially historic decision that will be held this week. The Scottish are going to vote whether or not they want to break away from the United Kingdom. Violently British arguments follow.

We all kind of know what a sandwich is, but trying to define it formally is like trying to explain what a human being looks like. The Atlantic steps up to the plate and suggests a way to check for a food’s sandwichness.

Good teachers are almost always overworked, underpaid and taken for granted. The least we could do is respect them. Math teacher Marcus Anderson combined a couple of emails from students for some Communication 101.

Men’s Health manages to take an embarassing subject that you probably never cared to know about, and turns it into an amusing and informative animation, courtesy of illustrator Rami Niemi and director Giant Ant.

(NSFW: Language) Tony Zhou pays tribute to the late Robin Williams in his signature way – with a technical analysis. Tony looks at Robin’s talent for expressing his character through movements, and how directors let Robin use this ability.

Ahoy takes on a weapon that was once described as “the greatest battle implement ever devised” – the M1 Garand. Watch to find out when and why the rifle became famous, and see its various video game appearances. Ping!

A Net Neutrality awareness campaign. See who has the power to influence the future of the Internet. We can help by spreading the word; US citizens can also sign a citizen letter for Net Neutrality.

(NSFW: Language, Gore) Cecil Trachenburg of Good Bad Flicks gives us a brief history of the PG-13 rating, a standard that was originally implemented to push boundaries but ended up becoming a burial ground for neutered films.

Gadget reseller Gizmogul gives us a peek at life in Agbogbloshie, Ghana, the world’s largest electronics dump. Parts of the junk in Agbogbloshie are sold or recycled but the rest are burned, polluting the town with toxic fumes.

The short answer? You don’t. Or rather, you can’t. Current decaffeination methods can’t extract all of the caffeine from coffee beans, which means if you want to stay caffeine-free you have to give up coffee completely.

Vsauce looks at ways to quantify the value of Earth. Then he points out how ridiculous it is that we can even think of selling our planet. Of course, those are just a few of the things he races through in the video.

Chef Naomichi Yasuda, owner of Sushi Bar Yasuda, teaches the basics of eating the world famous Japanese food. You can skip to 6:02 for the summary, but then you’d miss the chance to see a master at work.

A documentary about cryonics, the practice of freezing the dead in the hope that they can be revived in the future. Cryonics facilities are legally classified as cemeteries. There is currently no way to safely reverse the process.

Giro helmets educates us on the finer points of what happens to your brain in a crash, and how a seemingly small change to helmet design could protects us by moving just enough to reduce some of the most deadly and traumatic forces.