Awesome Learning

(PG-13: Language) Tony Zhou is back with another great breakdown of a filmmaker’s style and technique. This time he looks at Edgar Wright’s (Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) creative efficiency in delivering humor.

Russia’s Kola Superdeep Borehole took 24 years to drill, yet only goes a fraction of the way into our planet. SciShow explains what it took to drill 7.5 miles down, and why we may never know exactly what’s at Earth’s core.

(NSFW: Language) In the first episode of Action Bronson’s Munchies series, the chef-turned-rapper talks about his experiences from his recent international tour and enjoys a milkshake from his neighborhood ice cream shop.

Kanpur, India is known for its leather industry, but it has come at the expense of its citizens and environment. Some tanning plants dump large amounts of chemicals into their surroundings, causing pollution, sickness and fatalities.

Automatically generated charts of quantities with similar trends. Spurious Correlations is a humorous reminder for us to be mindful of false causes and to value research. Numbers don’t lie, but they don’t always talk either.

Hank Green presents the arguments for and against the principle of Net neutrality. It’s a very biased summary, but it should be. Folks, this is as dangerous as SOPA, and we’re already losing. You can help fight for Net neutrality.

Data scientist Matt Daniels looked at the variety of words in the first 35,000 lyrics of various hip hop artists and then ranked them in an infographic chart. The winner? Aesop Rock. And DMX needs a dictionary.

NPR talks about Schlieren Flow Visualization, a photographic technique that allows us to see changes in air density, making it possible to view the presence and flow of heat, fluids and sound.

Frane Selak is world famous for his uncanny luck in fatally unlucky situations. Over a 40-year period, he survived numerous deadly accidents, from his own car bursting into flames to falling out of a plane. So far, luck is still on his side.

Formerly called Lernstift (“learning pen”) VibeWrite is a refillable pen that helps you learn English. Currently, it vibrates to point out spelling errors. Future updates will enable it to help improve your handwriting and grammar.

(NSFW: Language, Gore) Cracked’s After Hours talks about some of the stereotypes and cliches that persist in Hollywood movies and some American TV shows. Some of them are offensive while some are weird and barely noticeable.

Vsauce’s Michael Stevens is back to ask and attempt to answer another imponderable: just how many things are there in the universe? And we’re not just talking about physical objects – you see, everything is a thing. Even this post.

Minutephysics reveals that narrowing your field of vision can help you see more clearly, and goes on to explain why the trick works. In the process, you’ll also learn the basics of lenses – both the artificial kind and the ones on our eyes.

PBS Idea Channel ponders if you can intentionally make a film like Troll 2 – a movie so awful it’s become beloved. They ponder upon it six minutes more than necessary, but at least you’ll get a laugh and a new word out of it.

In recognition of Limb Loss Awareness Month, Mental Floss guest host and Paralympic skier Josh Sundquist educates us on celebrities, athletes, and historical figures who lived through the loss of limbs or other body parts.

Don’t clap, snap! For their latest Instrumentals clip, cdza provides a comprehensive and thoroughly entertaining lesson on the evolution of jazz-style piano. If nothing else, we learned that Jazz used to be spelled “Jass.”

The Smarter Every Day family presents a seemingly odd event. A balloon filled with helium is placed in a car. When the car accelerates, instead of being pushed back like most objects, the balloon is nudged forward.

…without tearing it off Hulk Hogan-style. Crazy Russian Hacker shows us how to take off t-shirts in record time, and by using just one hand at that. Or maybe this method only works on shorkhts.

Can something that doesn’t exist have copies? In an era where art can be perfectly replicated, why do we still value the original work? Also, you’re a forgery. All that and more in another thought-provoking episode of Vsauce.

You may not know it, but there are ways to celebrate birthdays that don’t involve the Applebee’s waitstaff indifferently clapping. Mental Floss’ walks us through the diverse ways that other cultures celebrate their namedays.

The Sci Show outlines the general clues that help scientists look for habitable planets, including the size of a planet, what type of galaxy it’s in and more. Being a stellar real estate agent is hard. Also quasars are more terrifying than black holes.

A primer on patent trolls by Kirby Ferguson (Everything is a Remix). These opportunistic people take advantage of antiquated laws and lax patent agencies to extort money. Do your part to help fight patent trolls here.

It happens to all of us. You get a bottle of ketchup and you can’t get it to come out at all. Then you slap the bottle hard and it pours out all over the table. TEDucator George Zaidan explains the physics behind ketchup’s bad behavior.