1. FCC Chief Reveals Controversial Plan For Not Destroying The Internet

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler is proposing new regulations for the Internet which would classify it as a public utility, akin to water or electricity, thus making it illegal for broadband service providers to block or throttle access to legal online content and maintaining Net Neutrality. Many people are concerned that such regulations could hamper corporations' ability to ruin the Internet while lining the pockets of their shareholders.

I don't know much about net neutrality but I hope it prevents you from telling me every fucking thing you eat.
— Pat Healy (@Pat_Healy) February 4, 2015

2. Utah Lawmakers Debating When It Is And Is Not Acceptable To Rape An Unconscious Person

State legislators in Utah are currently working out the particulars for a law that would prohibit people from forcing sex upon a person who is not conscious and able to grant consent. At least one lawmaker is concerned about the bill's draconian wording. "If an individual has sex with their wife while she is unconscious ... a prosecutor could then charge that spouse with rape, theoretically," Rep. Brian Greene said, despite knowing that other humans could hear him. "That makes sense in a first date scenario, but to me, not where people have a history of years of sexual activity."

Utah is debating if sex with an unconscious person is rape. What if I move my girlfriend's mouth and impersonate her saying "Let's do it!"?
— Matt Fernandez (@FattMernandez) February 5, 2015

3. Johnny Depp Marries In Secret Ceremony That Was Seen By Even Fewer People Than Mortdecai

Actor Johnny Depp and his fiancé actress/model Amber Heard were married in a small and super secret ceremony in Depp's West Hollywood home on Tuesday. It is currently unknown what kind of grating accent and bizarre persona Depp was affecting for the occasion.

Johnny Depp is getting married and officially off the market. Sorry, ladies and Tim Burton.
— Warren Holstein (@WarrenHolstein) January 31, 2015

4. Sports Illustrated Has Some Interesting Ideas About What Constitutes A "Plus-Sized" Model

Sports Illustrated is bravely allowing the image of a bikini-clad, regular-looking woman—commonly referred to as "plus-sized"—to appear in an advertisement within this years' "Swimsuit Edition." We are truly entering a brave new world.

plus sized model = regular sized woman
— Fun_Beard (@Fun_Beard) December 19, 2014

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue to feature first plus-sized model in an ad http://t.co/WcORwFoqnlpic.twitter.com/MzIUU0A14E

— Creativity Editors (@creativitymag) February 5, 2015

5. Elvis And Nixon's Timeless Love Story Finally Being Brought To The Silver Screen

House of Cards star Kevin Spacey is stretching out as an actor by portraying a different United States president in the upcoming film Elvis & Nixon. Michael Shannon—best known for his roles as a crazy weirdo on Boardwalk Empire and a crazy weirdo in Take Shelter—will be playing crazy weirdo Elvis Presley opposite Spacey's Richard Nixon.

Berlin: See @KevinSpacey as Nixon in First 'Elvis & Nixon' Photo (Exclusive) http://t.co/rbiUJvcp3C@Berlinalepic.twitter.com/sO95pC1Tzt
— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) February 5, 2015

Sexiest Man Alive? Chris Hemsworth. Sexiest Man Dead? Still Nixon.

— Sean Thomason (@TheThomason) November 19, 2014

The Internet is (paid) for (with) porn (stars).

Something something "perks."

A post on a Chinese social media site has sparked Worldwide-Web-wide speculation that Chinese tech companies might be outdoing even Silicon Valley when it comes to employee perks. The post at On.CC claims to have found a list entitled "Web Companies Annual Meeting Gift List 2015 (Confidential)," which includes bonuses like a Porsche 911 and a week-long trip to Bali offered by such Internet giants as Alibaba, Sina Weibo, and Baidu. But the "grand prize" offered by the internet security company Qihoo 360 may be hard for other companies to match: a night with Japan AV porn star Julia:

The idea of such a list is not unbelievable; the Chinese New Year is around the corner, and companies in this competitive industry often keep track of what other firms are doing to reward top employees. And no one is doubting that Qihoo 360's bonus would be an...effective motivator. Julia has quite a big fandom in China, where there are approximately 30 million more men than women. It also wouldn't be without precedent.

Yui Hatano, a guest/prize of honor at a prominent tech company's dinner last year.

While these new reports remain unconfirmed, they match up with reports that last year another Japan AV star, Yui Hatano, attended a tech company's year-end banquet as a guest and left as a prize. Also backing up this theory: the fact that Japan AV linked to a story about these rumors on their Facebook page.

Google Translate could only give me so much insight into this mystery. If any multi-lingual readers have any better sense of what's going on, let us know. Obviously, this is an incredibly important story that we must pursue at all costs.

Like this cat before it's cool.

Cat or civil war reenactor?(via atchoumfan)

Check out this cat's Instagram ASAP so you can say to all your friends, "Oh my god, darling, you just have to meet Atchoum."

Do it in whatever accent Madonna has these days. Atchoum is the hot new "it" cat on the Internet this week. What sets him apart? Well he's Quebecois, has hypertrichosis and is going to appear in the next Haim video. One of those truths is a lie.

I've been feeling guilty about loving Internet cats because, depending on their owners, their lives can be pretty challenging. Here's hoping Atchoum's meteoric rise doesn't take him down a dark path.

Can someone invent a time machine and go sell this to me as a kid?

Move over, George Lucas. Get the heck out of here, JJ Abrams! I can't believe you even thought you were in the running, Will Wheaton! The new King of All Nerds has been crowned. His name is Olivier C, and he has built a scaled-down, working drone replica of the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, the Millennium Falcon. Aside from some issues with yaw control and the fact that the batteries drain too fast, probably due to the super-bright LEDs, the quadcopter looks like a million galactic credits and the physical embodiment of every 80s and 90s kids' fantasy toy.

How it was done:

Olivier posted this gallery of the drone's construction on Imgur:

Here's another video of the Falcon bombing around Hoth (i.e. the same vineyard but covered with snow and during the daytime) and recovering from a nasty spill:

Since he's the Nerd King, I'm not really one to question his judgment, but it's odd that his videos incorporate Darth Vader breathing and the Empire section of the theme rather than the main theme. The Falcon is a good-guy ship, after all (even when Lando owned it). So, why don't I just put this video of the main theme here and you can go back and watch the videos with the proper accompaniment:

I will leave you alone now with your inner child to figure out how you will build/buy this.

Hey! Look up from your screen! There's a humpback whale right in front of you.

If it's any consolation, it doesn't look like the birds are that excited about the whale, either.
(via Eric Smith)

Professional photographer Eric Smith captured this perfect moment in Redondo Beach, CA a few days ago when a whale surfaced to breathe right next to a man on his boat, but the man missed the whole thing because he was checking his phone.

In an interview with ABC, Smith said,

"A small private sailboat maneuvered really close to the whales, and this guy on it was literally sitting in that position and never moved. He could have been texting his mom in the hospital for all I know, but I thought it sucked that he missed such a wonderful moment happening just two feet in front of him."

Smith took five shots of the man and the whale, and the man never looked up.

The failure to notice something extraordinary right in front of us while we are distracted is known in the psychological world as selective attention, and in a sense can be credited to our ability to focus. The problem comes when we fail to notice huge chunks of our day because we were playing Candy Crush.

This could have been any one of us. For all you know, you probably missed something really exciting while you were reading this article.

Remember this terrifying little guy from yesterday?

@NottinghamPost can you tell me what this is? Nearly fed this to my children!! From Princes tuna chunks can pic.twitter.com/IHNw1PdFnO
— Zoe Butler (@zoelouisebutler) January 19, 2015

Ever since Nottingham, England woman Zoe Butler shared these nightmare images of the contents of her can of tuna with the Internet, people have been trying to puzzle out the exact taxonomy of the hideous little monster contained therein.

Well, due to the keen eye of someone at London's Natural History Museum, the mystery appears to be solved.

Please, take this advice to heart: do not continue scrolling down if you value your peace of mind.

Still here? Very well.

What we're dealing with here is a parasitic crustacean found in many fish called a Cymothoa exigua, or "tongue-eating louse."

"Hey! Occupied!"

But don't worry, that name isn't strictly accurate. It doesn't actually eat the tongue of the fish it feeds off of. It more so destroys the tongue and then lives in the fish's mouth as a sort-of replacement tongue. Here, I'll let Wikipedia explain because blech!

"Cymothoa exigua extracts blood through the claws on its front, causing the tongue to atrophy from lack of blood. The parasite then replaces the fish's tongue by attaching its own body to the muscles of the tongue stub. The fish is able to use the parasite just like a normal tongue. It appears that the parasite does not cause any other damage to the host fish."

This tiny abomination lives inside the fish's mouth, acting as an ersatz tongue, feeding off its host's blood and/or mucus.

According to the Natural History Museum's Stuart Hine, the Cymothoa exigua tends to target species of fish much smaller than tuna, so this specimen was probably living inside the mouth of a fish that the tuna had eaten shortly before it was pulled from the ocean, chopped up and jammed into a can that was almost fed to the children of Zoe Butler.

Hey, is anybody else getting hungry?

Well, this is some bullshit.

Every woman has the right to deal with the horrible frustration of pumping at work.
(stock photo of some lady who was probably fired)

Angela Ames is a former loss-mitigation specialist at Nationwide Insurance. Shortly after returning from maternity leave, Ames was fired after requesting break time and a private space in the office to pump during the day. She sued for discrimination and lost.

Now, the Supreme Court has rejected her petition to overturn the trial court's ruling, which included the finding "that breastfeeding-related firings aren't sexist because men can lactate, too," says RawStory.

Yep, that old defense.

"I hate when it's Daddy's turn to nurse me." (stock photo)

And if you learn the full story, it gets worse!

Here's what happened: After giving birth prematurely (what did I tell you?), Ames had two months off for maternity leave (hang on, that's not the part that's supposed to make you angry). On the day she got back, she couldn't access the lactation room at her office because no one would give her the key—she was told it would take several days for her to get in. Fun first day back at the office!

Her supervisor, who is clearly an unfeeling boob (Sorry, I only use puns when I am filled with rage), told her to "just go home and be with your babies." He then drafted a resignation letter for her.

That wasn't enough for the court that first heard Angela's case to rule against Nationwide. According to the ACLU's Galen Sherwin:

The courts dismissed Angela's case saying that she didn't take sufficient steps to complain internally before writing her letter of resignation – even though her own supervisor was the one who handed her the pen and dictated what to write – and therefore, she wasn't really fired. The courts found it irrelevant that Angela was supposed to take these additional steps while engorged and waiting for a pumping room that her employer told her wouldn't be available for several days.

The court also deemed "just go home and be with your babies" to be a gender-neutral comment, even though it's exactly that kind of thinking that led Congress to pass the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. Now that the Supreme Court has decided not to hear the case, Ames has no more options. Her employers are off the hook.

Only a baby could be fooled into thinking that's fair.

"I see what you did there, lady." (stock photo)

"Oh, jeez! Where'd you get those horns?! I want some of those!"

This dog is never going to get to play with that deer if he keeps up that attitude. He needs to play a little harder to get. And then he's got to "neg" that deer. Something like, "Those horns make it look like you're overcompensating for something." It doesn't seem like it would work, but it does. Believe you me.

Hey, that's cool. OH MY GOD IT'S BEING COOL RIGHT AT US!

If anyone is gonna build a Snowpiercer train in the future, it'll probably be the Canadian National Railway. This CN train, the 406 West, was filmed at 3:05 pm on Tuesday in Salisbury, New Brunswick (train people are great for specificity). It was the first of the day after a week with three separate blizzards, but that apparently means nothing to the insane, invincible force that is this freight train.

Containerman2, the YouTube train lover who bravely got pummeled with snow to film this, says he's "not even sure how many locomotives that train had" in order to plow so effectively through the snow. Containerman2 also wondered, as I did, how the conductors could see anything at all...like, you know, where to eventually stop.

Not that I care, though, because this is the coolest thing I've seen all week.

There's not really a point to watching after about 1:30, though, unless you like trains as much as containerman2.

How many dead deer CAN YOU fit into a MINI Cooper with you and three of your friends??

Hi haters. (via ABC)

Either they're making another sequel to The Hangover, or Lucy's got some 'splaining to do.

Four dudes in Orange County, FL were awakened by cops last Saturday after they stuffed themselves inside a MINI cooper with four dead deer, smoked some weed, and passed out.

"The men said they partied all night,then went on an illegal, out-of-season 3am joy ride and deer hunt." reported ABC. "Then, they all passed out."

These guys really know how to rage. Good luck topping that with your boring strip club bachelor party. These dudes slept with four dead deer. It's not gross, it's bonding.

Deputies say the MINI stalled out before the men went to sleep, but it seems worth it for the best night ever.

But what?

Somehow, this 20 second video contains multitudes. There's the hopeless struggle in the face of relatively small obstacle. Only a cup. Aren't so many of the little things that have held us back, when seen objectively, no more powerful than a single red Solo cup? But when you're in the cup you can't see outside the cup.

Then the unexpected reprieve from an unlikely source. A dog! A dog capable of compassion and action. As the callous human stands taping the scene and giggling, the dog decides enough is enough. It saves a fellow creature, its sworn enemy: Cat.

Actually, I think the cat vs. dog thing is a false dichotomy, but I'll save my dissertation on that for the next video of an animal howling along to Miley Cyrus, or whatever.

Take a moment of zen.

#TBT #breaktheinternet

A video posted by The Daily Show (@thedailyshow) on Feb 5, 2015 at 11:49am PST

Phew! This was posted as a Throwback Thursday but under the auspices of Flashback Friday we can still share this incredible video from October 11th 2001, posted on The Daily Show's Instagram account.

An intelligent man is sexy. An intelligent man posing like a pin up to a saxophone sound track is more than I ever hoped for. THREE intelligent men, posing like pin ups to the sax is going to #breaktheinternet.

And good luck with that Oscar nomination, Steve Carell!

What would your child-self think of your adult-self?

Your boss or parents might have judgmental things to say about your current life, but to a child, your adult life is pretty freakin' awesome. Sure, your life might feel like a mess, but ya know what kids love? BEING MESSY.

1) Your Room / Closet Looks Like a Tornado Hit It

And you keep it that way, because no one tells you to clean it. It's messy and you love it. Why? Because it's yours. It makes you feel good to throw your shit on the floor. Like your pants. You want your pants on the floor, and your child-self would happily agree with your choice to be a slob.

2) You Eat Ice-Cream For Breakfast

Your child-self would have sacrificed everything to have ice cream at her discretion. The freedom to eat ice cream whenever you want seems like an option only royalty should have. If she watched you eat ice cream on a particularly lazy and self-indulgent morning, she would know that you are, in fact, a real-life princess.

3) You Stay Up Late And Watch TV

When you were a kid, you probably had a TV limit. You also had a bedtime, which was some bullshit. Your child-self wished she had the freedom to stay up late and watch The Care Bears Movie. Your adult-self actually gets to do that because the amazing 1985 movie is currently streaming on Netflix. Your life is so cool that you can even watch it while writing or doing taxes, because you're a grown-ass lady who knows how to multitask while watching cartoons.

4) You Have a Job With A Hat (Hats Are Awesome)

Adults are impressed by high wages, status, and owning expensive property. You know what kids are impressed by? A job at Subway. Because you get to wear a COOL HAT. Kids love hats. Your child-self particularly loved jobs in the service industry (she pretended to have them all the time) because of the hats. She liked to pretend she was a waitress. Are you a waitress now? Your inner-child would think that was awesome. She would be so jealous you get to write things out on that little pad of paper. She would think that was way more fun than being some "CEO" or whatever your friend is.

5) You Buy That Dumb Thing In That Dumb Store

You spend your money on practical things like rent, but sometimes you wanna waste it on a bunch of knickknacks in the check-out line at Forever 21 (that you def don't need). That parental voice in your head tells you you're frivolous. But you know what? Your child-self reaaaally would have encouraged you to buy that shit. She would have thought that mustache pen was so cool. The fact that you have money in your checking account to buy that mustache pen is SO COOL. BUY IT.

6) You Put On A Lot Of Stupid Make-Up

Remember how fun it was to go through your mom's make-up bag and try on all her lipstick? Well, now, as an adult, there is a magical land you can visit, with every kind of product you can think of. It's called "Sephora." They will let you try on all the make-up in the world, and you can buy crazy things you love and definitely don't need—hair mascara? WTF?—because of #5.

7) You Wear Not-Weather-Appropriate Clothing

Yes, when it's cold out you should wear layers of clothing. But that doesn't mean you have to. Instead of those sensible, warm sweater tights, sometimes ya just wanna wear those sheer tights with red hearts on them. Ok, fine, they do make your butt cold, but you want the dumb tights. Your child-self would never be permitted to go out in flimsy tights or a fall jacket in winter, but now, you call the shots. Your butt may be cold, but you're a boss. You are the boss of your butt.

8) You Can Cross the Street All By Yourself

You may not remember it, but there was a time in your life when you weren't allowed to go anywhere alone. To a kid, the idea of walking around the neighborhood alone sounds supremely adventurous. Take a moment to relive that feeling, and acknowledge that your whole life is like that now. Walking alone unsupervised = badass.

9) You Make It Halloween Every Goddamn Day

When you were little, you had to wait all year to wear a costume. Now, thanks to events like Comic-Con, Brony-Con, theme parades, and theme parties, there are hundreds of excuses for you to play dress up. You can buy costumes year-round and wear them for no reason. Being an adult means you don't need excuses. Put on some cat ears! Go buy some fake fur! Get dressed like a weirdo and go out with your friends. Your child-self would be in awe. She'd look at you and think your life is just one big party. And you know what?

It kinda is.

(all images via Thinkstock)

Turn the volume way up on this one to hear his mighty battle cry before heading toward his destiny!

Give him slippery or give him death!

This child may learn his lesson and sit up for his next trip down the slide, but thanks to the permanence of the Internet, he will be forever be captured in our hearts and minds as the innocent who submitted himself to the fate of the slide, bonking his head with a satisfyingly percussive hollowness all the way down.

Is there any amongst us who cannot laugh? Who cannot find joy in the folly of children???

Calm down, he's fine. Jeez.

The porn part is old news.

It's voyeuristic and fun to see someone grappling with a new experience and this video provides that. The guy at 1:18 in particular seems to forget that while he's watching, he is also being watched.

One complaint: Most of these people are not that old. A lot of them are just in their sixties, which, if we do the math, puts them firmly in the Baby Boomer generation. They came of age in an era most commonly associated with war protests, drugs and Free Love. The virtual reality might be new, but I doubt anything in the porn they're watching is all that shocking. The oldest of them all, a 79 year old, lays it out for us.

"Subject matter was boring. I've seen too much."

I bet you have.