When you're smiling, the whole universe smiles with you.

God just sent us an emoji.(via NASA)

The Hubble Space Telescope spotted this image of a friendly little guy they call the SDSS J1038+4849 galaxy cluster. If I were going to name him, I'd go with "Buddy," but to each his own. He's got galaxies for eyes, an Einstein ring for a smile, and he's just precious. They say his appearance is due to an effect they call gravitational lensing, but I like to think the Hubble told him to say "cheese."

Finally, science isn't a bummer!

1. Supreme Court Refuses To Aid Alabama In Its Moral Crusade Against Human Decency

The United States Supreme Court is refusing to halt a federal court ruling that effectively legalizes marriage equality in Alabama. Justice Clarence Thomas blasted the decision in his dissent, complaining of the "Court's increasingly cavalier attitude" toward states' rights to infringe upon the rights of their citizens.

The Supreme court ruled that queer people can still marry in Alabama, but they added "but you guys should move somewhere more fun"

— Barbara Holm (@barbara_holm) February 9, 2015

2. Marvel Cinematic Universe Acquires Little Known Character Called "Arachnid-Person" Or Something

Marvel Studios announced last night that it has come to a deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment to bring the comic book character Spider-man into their cinematic universe. Many excited fans are speculating that this means the classic superhero will play a major role in next year's scheduled Captain America: Civil War. Others are simply relieved that, with the franchise rebooting yet again, they won't have to see anymore of Paul Giamatti as Rhino.

I would love if in the Marvel movies Spider-man randomly gets PTSD about the shitty movies he's been in the last few years

— Mike Lawrence (@TheMikeLawrence) February 10, 2015

3. Kanye West Called A "Twat" By Person Who Has A Legitimate Point

Shirley Manson—lead vocalist for that band Garbage that apparently still makes music—did not mince words when she called Kanye West out for his childlike behavior at Sunday night's Grammy Awards ceremony. "It is YOU who is so busy disrespecting artistry," she wrote in an open letter to the rapper/singer who is probably stomping around his private jet in anger right now. "Grow up and stop throwing your toys around. You are making yourself look like a complete twat."

Kanye West should auto-tune his opinions.

— Matt Besser (@MattBesser) February 10, 2015

4. Miley Cyrus Succeeds In Getting Porn Festival Viewers To Watch Her Being Naked And Weird

The New York City Porn Festival has accepted Miley Cyrus's light bondage film "Tongue Tied" [NSFW] to screen alongside actual pieces of hardcore pornography that aren't just some pop singer being weird and arty while stoned.

Hey, anyone know if Miley Cyrus is into sex?

— Miles Kahn (@mileskahn) January 16, 2015

5. NASA Confirms Additional Side Of The Moon

NASA has just released a video featuring rarely seen images of what we refer to as the "dark side" of the moon, which is always facing away from the Earth. This probably comes as a huge blow to some conspiracy theorist out there.

I feel like I'm CONSTANTLY getting caught between the moon and New York City.

— Chris Schleicher (@cschleichsrun) February 7, 2015

Imagine the most adorable way this tortoise could eat a bean sprout. THEN press play.

He's pulling himself along by the sprout! I rest my case and my tiny legs.

He deals with abuse well.

I had to read the Wikipedia article to contextualize this scene and this movie sounds like hell to sit through. Guess that's how things get nominated for Oscars. Weird Al tries to improve on his flawless accordion tootling under the direction of J.K. Simmons. He is beaten, but his spirit is not broken, even when he gets hit by a chair.

"Why do you think I just threw that chair at you?" asks J.K.

Al answers, "You're trying to win an Oscar?"

Too true.

And she is the queen of backhanded compliments.

When you watch that video of the crowd's reaction and read Beck's very chill response to Kanye's "Imma let you finish" call-back, it's like, what's the problem? Looks like a bunch of millionaires giggling to me.

Well, Shirley Manson has a problem and she spoke about it very articulately on her Facebook page today:

Dear Kanye West,
It is YOU who is so busy disrespecting artistry.
You disrespect your own remarkable talents and more importantly you disrespect the talent, hard work and tenacity of all artists when you go so rudely and savagely after such an accomplished and humble artist like BECK.
You make yourself look small and petty and spoilt.
In attempting to reduce the importance of one great talent over another, you make a mockery of all musicians and music from every genre, including your own.
Grow up and stop throwing your toys around.
You are making yourself look like a complete twat.
Ps.I am pretty certain Beyonce doesn't need you fighting any battles on her account. Seems like she's got everything covered perfectly well on her own.

Oh lord. It's like, yes, that's true, but also maybe we could never talk about this again and it would be okay for everyone involved? Because this is the world we live in now:

2015, baby. (via Time)

Music isn't a joke. The Grammys kind of seem to be.

Mm-hmm.

Of all the supercuts from Baracksdubs turning presidential speeches into word soup karaoke, this one seems particularly apt for the head of our country. They didn't even need to do any Frankenstein editing to get a clip of Barack Obama shouting, "Shake it off!"

It's what he says in the mirror every night.

"Hey, I haven't smelled you around here lately."

Sorry to tell you this, but your dog is a weirdo. You might take your dog's bizarre behavior for granted, but can you imagine how odd it would look if a human being behaved in a similar fashion? I'm not even talking about truly psychotic things like threatening to murder absolute strangers on the street. I just mean normal stuff, like the things they do at the local dog park.

You know what, don't even bother trying to imagine it. This video has got you covered:

If you don't have a little four-legged maniac of your own yet, here's a directory of no-kill shelters so you can find one in your area.

Remember: your meat flowers will last longer if you change the grease in your vase every day.

Just in time for Valentine's Day, UCB Comedy's Pocketwatch made this parody commercial for Meat Flowers: The Flowers for Men. Pretty silly, huh?

Well, yes. But they're actually not far from the truth. There's this place in England that makes roses out of steak, and Pinterest is full of instructions for DIY bacon roses.

Of course, if you'd rather not shell out the cash for a meat bouquet, there's something free you can give your guy instead of flowers.

Come in, come in. Make yourself at nest.

Imagine coming home to this face.(via imgur user DrewNOPE)

Redditor hewlandrower took these amazing pictures of a red-tailed hawk that crashed through his window and lived to squawk the tale. He was letting his pet corgi into the yard (for perhaps the last time) when he heard a crash from his bedroom and ran to investigate. What he saw was so amazing, he had to Instagram it:

This motherfucker.
A video posted by drewnold (@drewnold) on Feb 6, 2015 at 11:09am PST

The hawk was disoriented, but alive. Alive enough to scratch up all the wood in the room and poop on everything, which is more alive than I've ever been. Animal control eventually removed the bird, but not before hewlandrower documented the whole thing.

"Get your hands off me! I have rights!"(via imgur user DrewNOPE)

"Hey, is that a camera? Hi mom!"(via imgur user DrewNOPE)

Next time you have an uninvited houseguest you can't get rid of, just be glad they're not scratching and pooping on everything. And if they are, I only hope they're a bird.

I hope you've taken all the prerequisites for this master course on subtlety.

Europe: it's old, it's cultured, and you can have sex in it.
(via redditor sexyvinilaphreshness)

Yesterday's paper edition of the Metro UK featured this *sigh* cheeky *ugh* ad from LastMinute.com, a travel website specializing in, you guessed it, last-minute travel deals. Since it's Valentine's Day, Last Minute wanted to appeal to all the romantics out there looking for a special getaway. Except, of course, real "romantics" actually make plans in advance. So, who are they left with? Horny people with poor planning skills.

Thus, the #lustminute ad campaign was born. The message is simple, and it is effective: your odds of getting laid go way up if you take someone on a European vacation. I mean, how could they not when the entire continent is apparently festooned with dishes that look like genitals, towers that look like genitals, and butts that look like butts?

They dispense with the subtlety entirely in their somewhat-NSFW (naked sculptures and paintings!) video ad:

Sex sells, especially the promise of actual sex for you, the customer.

I've been single since birth (yes every year counts) and finally decided to take the plunge into online dating.

I signed up for the classy app Tinder because it requires zero work and almost no personal information. During the first terrifying moments in the wild jungle of cool-looking brosephs, I managed to spill soup on my pants. Hey, it's hard to swipe right AND eat soup! And yes, I always swipe right because I like giving everyone a chance to disappoint me.

If I'd met one of these upstanding male citizens IRL, my spilled soup tactic would be a great conversation starter, so I used it to break the ice in conversations with my Tinder matches.

Here's what happened when I asked potential future house-husbands for cleaning tips.

This guy wanted to charge me for his services:

Potential house husband material, no doubt:

Very helpful:

I'd lick it if I could reach it:

Google it:



I got ahead of myself with this guy:

Worst idea of all:

Ladies and gentlemen, Pepper Dick.

Is it wearing a tiny pepper condom?

People send us pictures a lot, and most of them leave us non-plussed at best. That was all before Pepper Dick. Pepper Dick was sent to us by a reader who wishes to remain anonymous, presumably because she is a busy person and couldn't handle the extra pressures of fame. She also claims to have "better angles" of this dick she found while cutting open a pepper. As someone who has been on the Internet long enough to see a lot of non-pepper dicks, I can safely say that this is a pretty flattering angle.

"Why am I reading this?" asks the inevitable commenter. Because when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When life hands you a Pepper Dick, you put that thing on the Internet.

After breaking up with girlfriend Elizabeth Gallagher, (possible murderer) Jordan Axani was made famous for searching the internet for a replacement Elizabeth Gallagher. He has now returned from that trip and is ready to talk.

A killer (maybe) in plain sight. (Via FB)

I don't have any proof, but this guy is a murderer.

Back in November, 28-year-old Jordan Axani wanted to find someone who would be able to take advantage of the non-transferrable tickets for the round-the-world trip Axani originally planned with his then-girlfriend, Elizabeth Gallagher.

The world then watched in amazement/incredulity/horror as hundreds of Elizabeth Gallaghers applied to be his potential victim. Before long, he did find a suitable Liz Gallagher replacement: 23-year-old Elizabeth Quinn Gallagher, a younger girl who already had a boyfriend.

When he finally found this new Liz in December, I wrote:

He said he wasn't looking for a girlfriend replacement, he just wanted to "give back to the universe," and we all had to hope that "give back to the universe" did not mean "kill in cold blood and then dispose of in the Ganges."

His announcement that he found his new Liz was the last we heard from him before he took his trip on December 21st.

If the old Elizabeth Gallagher wasn't already dead, the new one definitely would be.

This week, Axani has returned from his trip and agreed to tell his story on reddit's podcast Upvoted, bringing things back to the website that started it all.

The podcast begins with an introduction by host Alexis Onhanion, bravely sitting in the same room as Axani.

"I am Jorand Axani, and I'm the focus, I suppose, of a crazy viral reddit story."

The second I heard Axani's soft, measured voice I knew it was that of a murderer. A person who was consciously trying to maintain control.

The next thing he says is he grew up in a small town north of Toronto and he "was bullied profusely in elementary and high school"

Typical serial killer start to life, and reminiscent of Dr. Evil's speech in group therapy. His confession made me feel bad for calling him a murderer. I mean, he probably is one, but now I know why and it is sad.

Axani then explained how he turned his life around by taking a bike trip by himself across Canada, and how being on his own and meeting strangers put him in touch with humanity. Being a cold and isolated outsider is what makes this guy feel connected? I bet he's tried to open a skull with a can opener.

Finally, he divulges information about the first Elizabeth Gallagher.

"We dated briefly in 2011, ummm, uh, it wasn't the right time and place. And we ended up dating a little bit more a couple years later and we were together for about a year. We decided a couple years ago that we were going to spend basically all of our money and extra time on traveling and seeing the world, basically because you only have these years once, and we both shared a fear of 'if we didn't do it now, when would we?'"

Impulsivity control problems? Another hallmark of a serial killer.

Throughout the whole ordeal, he has been notoriously been tight-lipped about the original Liz, and even begged people in his original post to leave her alone.

Why? What are you hiding, Axani? Don't want the curious media finding her body???

Jordan never explains why they broke up, and Ohanion fills in the blanks by saying "they decided they were not meant to be."

They were not meant to be what? Alive? Where is the first Elizabeth Gallagher and where is her side of the story? We have no proof that she ever existed, other than the original tickets in her name. I bet Elizabeth Gallagher is really his mom's name.

Axani explains he gave himself a month to get over the end of his relationship (i.e. kill Gallagher #1, hide her body, create an alibi, etc.), and then went about seeing if he could change the name of the ticket.

He was told that there were only three circumstances under which he could change the name: if that person got married, divorced, or died.

"Well none of those three things happened. I wasn't even going to try to lie about someone dying [nervous laughter], so I immediately cut that one off."

Aughghhhh! Who said you should try the death one, ya sicko? And why the nervous laughter? Can someone just look for the original Elizabeth, please? Her family has a right to a proper goodbye.

Then he explains how he came up with the idea to find a new Elizabeth.

"Somebody said to me that Elizabeth Gallagher is a fairly typical name, so why wouldn't you try to find somebody else with that same name and give the ticket?"

"Somebody" said this to him. The voices in his head?

He then said, "the whole table burst into laughter at the idea."

If you or anyone else you know is anthropomorphizing tables, seek help immediately.

If I'm a murderer, then why would I risk taking you to this isolated location?
(via Facebook)

The next day he thought about the idea again, thinking "That was an interesting wine-induced thought" and then went back and forth about actually posting his search to reddit.

After writing everything down, he said he read his post back to himself and had two thoughts:

"One, this is so crazy it might work, and secondly, this is just crazy."

Then he posted it.

Boi-oi-oi-oi-oing! I'm crazy!

He originally posted in reddit's travel section, where it was immediately flagged and taken down by a moderator because, "this is a Canadian issue, this has no global interest whatsoever, so you should put it in the Canada thread."

The moderator was sort of right, because only Elizabeth Gallaghers with a Canadian passport could take advantage of Axani's murder opportunity, but also not right, because a murder is the world's problem.

"Looking back on that now that's of course," Axani remembers, "thats [laughter], a very comical thing."

He then tried again in the Canada thread, and also on Facebook with the request, "Internet, don't fail me now."

When he woke up the next day, he was famous. Over 40 million people had heard of his story.

"I just remember this sinking feeling of like holy ****, is this about to blow up? Is this what the early stage of something viral looks like? CAN I KILL IT? IS IT REAL? DO I HAVE TO KILL IT?

He said the only part that bothered him was that it was leading strangers to the original Elizabeth Gallagher.

"Im a fairly private guy. I didn't mind my privacy going by the wayside here. But I hated the idea that people were going to be trying to find her and get her opinion about it."

And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you pesky reporters trying to find my victims.

"This was implicating Elizabeth, and that was something that was really, really hard."

Well, if he says "really" twice, he must have empathy like he learned from books about human emotions.

Why did he use the word implicated? Does implicated mean something less criminal in Canada?

He says he began to sift through the hundreds of incoming applications to be the next Elizabeth Gallagher. Beyond having her name and a Canadian passport, he had another requirement of his guest,

"When you have a global story and you bring in somebody else, inevitably what is going to happen is that person would be implicated. Who ever that was would have to be ok with that."

There's that word "implicated" again...

He narrowed it down to one girl, Quinn (Elizabeth Quinn Gallagher). He said he picked her because "we got each other, we had a similar sense of humor and cadence."

Is she a murderer, too?

He said they formed a brother/sister relationship, and that "it's really the best case that could have come from it."

The second-best case? He kills her.

He then goes on to say how he was touched by many of the emails he received during his hunt, and that it inspired him to start a charitable organization that helps people take "transformative" trips. He said he wanted to use the momentum of this story to help promote ATicketForward.org, so he quickly established the site before leaving for his trip.

"I'm not a fame-seeking guy," he says. "When given the platform you have the opportunity and kind of the obligation to do something noble with it."

Just like Dexter and his code of ethics.

After pimping out his good-guy alter ego, he gives us one juicy anecdote about what acutally happened on the trip.

He told a story about how he almost "lost" the new Elizabeth Gallagher in a casino/strip club/coke den in Prague, and how when he found her four rooms deep through a maze of corridors, she was sitting on the ground, weeping.

Then the podcast ends with another plea to support his charity. The rest of the trip, and how it ended up, remains a mystery, except as he documents it on his blog. The last image we have of Quinn is at an airport in Hong Kong. Jordan posted it on his Instagram account with the comment, "Quinn doesn't wanna go home!"

We must find Elizabeth Quinn Gallagher.

Or forget about her, and just donate to his charity!

The first picture is from two months ago, December 1st, 2014. The second was taken yesterday.

"Even, today, when people tell me I'm beautiful, I do not believe a word of it."
(all images via Getty Images)

Thanks to René Zellweger and Britney Spears, 2014 was the year of the "I have a totally new face and don't expect anyone to notice it." Yes, people have been getting plastic surgery forever, but now it seems almost every month a face we knew and understood has gone missing.

Uma Thurman took the trend into 2015 as she stepped out on Monday at the NY premiere party for her new miniseries, The Slap.

What

happened

to

your

face?

What happened???

Cosmetic surgeon Mark Norfolk explained his theories as to what she did in The Daily Mail:

"The thing that strikes me most is that her eye area looks very different. It looks as though she's had a recent lower blepharoplasty treatment, also known as eye bag removal. She isn't wearing any eyeliner or mascara, probably in order to avoid infection from the new surgery.
'Her face shape seems to have changed significantly – her face looks less defined. I would say that she's probably had a recent course of strong chemical peels as well as some dermal filler injected into the cheeks and nasal labial area; which is all contributing to this swollen-looking finish as it can have this effect immediately after undergoing these treatments."

So long, Uma Thurman's face. This never gets any easier.

(all images via Getty Images)