Shia LaBeouf has certainly tried his hardest to make himself strange and at times dislikable, but his extended public foray into performance art-level weirdness has finally broken through, thanks to a marathon of his films that he invited the public to watch in person and via livestream. But the livestream didn't show his films—they showed his reaction to watching them. Like a quantum particle, Shia is obviously affected by the audience observing him, but it's hard not to enjoy the authentic mixture of embarrassment and joyful nostalgia that grips LaBeouf as he watches his child star self in the Disney Family movie version of Even Stevens, the show that made him famous. Not many people were in major motion pictures as children, but almost everyone was in a home movie, and this is pretty much how most people would react if they had to re-watch an embarrassing but fondly-remembered moment with a room full of strangers:

Here's a recap of some of LaBeouf's, um, "highlights" from the last few years. It's good to see he's figured it out now (hopefully):

In real life, you don't always get to have the ideal final conversation with your ex—you might get flustered or angry or ghosted. But in rom coms, characters have the benefit of a screenwriter to plan their dialogue and a first act to snappily reference. Here are seven perfect goodbyes said to an ex before walking away.

1. Bridget in Bridget Jones's Diary when Daniel says if he can't make it with her, he can't make it with anyone:

That’s not a good enough offer for me. I’m not willing to gamble my whole life on someone who’s not quite sure. It’s like you said: I’m still looking for something more extraordinary than that.

2. Bianca in 10 Things I Hate About You while hitting Joey three times in a row: 

That’s for making my date bleed. That’s for my sister. And that’s for me.

3. Elle in Legally Blonde echoing Warner's break-up speech about wanting to be a senator by the time he's 30:

But if I'm going to be a partner in a law firm by the time I'm 30, I need a boyfriend who's not such a complete bonehead.

4. Torrance in Bring It On playing on her cheating boyfriend Aaron's words ("You're a great cheerleader, Tor, and you're cute as hell. Maybe you're just not 'captain' material."):

You're a great cheerleader, Aaron, and you're cute as hell, but maybe you're just not 'boyfriend' material. Buh bye.

5. Summer and Tom negotiating their split in 500 Days of Summer:

Summer: We’ve been like Sid and Nancy for months now. 

Tom: Summer, Sid stabbed Nancy seven times with a kitchen knife. We have some disagreements but I hardly think I’m Sid Vicious. 

Summer: No, I’m Sid!

6. Lucy in While You Were Sleeping coming clean about pretending to be Peter's fiancé when he was in a coma:

I might have saved your life on the tracks that day, but you know what? You really saved mine. You allowed me to be a part of your family, and I haven’t had that in a really long time. And I just didn’t want to let go of that. So even though it was just for a little while, I will love them always. I’m very sorry. Oh, and I’m very sorry about your carpet.

7. Robbie in The Wedding Singer saying goodbye to Linda:

I realized I was never really in love with you cause now I’m really in love with someone else.

When we were promised our fabulous future, it had a few hallmarks: jet packs, unending joy, and crystal-clear video conference calls. But, as we all know, the real future is a disappointing mess of jets in non-pack-form, depression, and desperate attempts to try to hear someone who thought it'd be a good idea to FaceTime from an underground parking garage. Internet funny people Tripp and Tyler have done a riff on their original "conference call in real life" video with this real-life video conference call. Yes, it's a sponsored video, but not the shitty kind where it's overbearing and not funny.

For many, last week's terrorist attack brought up painful memories of the Charlie Hebdo attacks earlier this year. On January 7th, Islamist extremists opened fire in the offices of French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and took hostages at a Kosher grocery store in Paris. Now, Charlie Hebdo has unveiled their first cover since the most recent massacre in Paris, and it maintains their message of defiance. 

With champagne flooding out of bullet holes, it says, "They have the weapons. F**k them, we have the Champagne." 

Amen. It's like John Oliver said, "F**k those unconscionable flaming arseholes." Freedom will always win out.

This past July, Amber Scorah's son died at a day care center. It was on her very first day back to work, and their first time apart for any length of time. In an essay for the New York Times, she writes about the pain of her loss, but also why she thinks it's so important for people to hear her story. Amber didn't want to leave Karl after just 3 months, but her work would not provide her with more paid leave, nor would they allow her take a couple more months off unpaid. She asks this heartbreaking question:

Why, why does a parent in this country have to sacrifice her job, her ability to provide her child with proper health care — or for many worse off than me, enough food to eat — to buy just a few more months to nurture a child past the point of vulnerability?

Amber worked at Scholastic, a job she got despite not having a degree. She was afraid of quitting because then she'd have to find a job without that piece of paper, and it would leave herself, her husband and her baby without health insurance. It seemed like day care was her only option. She picked one that came recommended and was near her job so she could nurse him during her lunch hour. She did what the majority of working moms have to do. And she still felt sick about it.

I justified it a million ways, as one justifies when one has run out of alternatives. He is an only child and maybe he would like to play with these other children. There are other babies who have been there since they were 6 weeks old, and Karl is 15 weeks. He is strong and has never been sick a day in his life!. It’s not like he’s going to die!

But no matter how I tried to make myself feel better, it felt bad.

The day came, and she dropped Karl off:

The day-care owner told a joke that was probably told to all new parents dropping their babies off on the first day: The worst thing that could happen was he would get hit by a fire truck — since once a toddler had hit a baby with a toy truck on his first day. I felt reassured. This was what everyone did, how everyone felt.

I returned to the day care at 12:15 to nurse Karl. I was so excited to see him, I ran the two blocks there from the office. As I took the stairs by twos to the second floor, I noticed that the door to the day care was propped open. It seemed odd to me — that they would leave the door open, with so many toddlers inside. I walked around the corner, expecting to pick up my son, feel his chubby rolls, see his face light up at the sight of his mommy.

Instead, I saw my son unconscious, splayed out on a soft changing table. His lips and the area around his mouth were blue, and the day-care owner was performing CPR on him, incorrectly.

Our sweet son died two and a half hours after the first time I had left him.

Would Karl have died if he had been with me that morning? The medical examiner finished her report last week and the conclusion is: undetermined.

Amber is haunted by the events of that day, not knowing if she could have prevented her baby's death. And she doesn't want anyone else to have to face what her family is facing. She's launched a website called For Karl, where people can find their local representative and contact them about paid parental leave for new parents. Amber says:

I wasn’t just up against the end of my parental leave. I was up against an entire culture that places very little value on caring for infants and small children. Parental leave reduces infant death, gives us healthier, more well-adjusted adults and helps women stay in the workforce. If we truly valued the 47 percent of the workforce who are women, and the value of our families, things would look different. Mothers could go back to work after taking time off to recover physically from birth and bond with their young children. Health care could be available to bridge that return to work so that our children could get their wellness checkups and vaccinations.

Yes, it’s possible that even in a different system, Karl still might not have lived a day longer, but had he had been with me, where I wanted him, I wouldn’t be sitting here, living with the nearly incapacitating anguish of a question that has no answer.

There are plenty of good examples of how to create a national parental leave system that works. Our children can’t afford lobbyists. It’s up to us parents to demand more.

Amber and Karl's story is devastating, especially because Karl's is not the only case like it. She's hoping that by sharing it she can advocate for a better world:

You can read her full essay here. 

This video of teens trying to text with T9 keyboards reminds us of a simpler time, a time before smartphones, when texting was difficult enough that even teens didn't do it all the time. Flip phones were once what everyone used; they weren't just burner phones in Breaking Bad or relics that make people lose their minds when they appeared in new Adele videos. As it turns out, switching back to buttons on a phone is extremely challenging once you make the leap to touch screens.

Many of the teens used to be self-proclaimed experts at old school texting:

I used to be a pro at this.

I like, grew up with T9. And I used to be able to do it under the table, like in class, and you wouldn't have to look.

But even kids that were once able to swiftly text with T9 have lost that magic touch, and their attempts resulted in a bunch of garbled nonsense. Some of them barely managed to make one word:

We've come a long way in texting. Just this week, an emoji was named the word of the year. And soon, kids' reactions to dated phones will be similar to their reactions to cassette players. In the future, when everyone controls their watch phones with eye movements, teens will wonder how anyone ever texted with their fingers at all. 

An 11-year-old girl wrote a letter to Santa, and instead of asking him for a trampoline or a Bop-It or something, she asked him to cure her mother's illness. Bobbie-Mae Chalk is an 11-year-old from Southhampton, England, whose mother Debby suffers from Crohn's Disease—a chronic inflammatory bowel disease that's incredibly taxing on the digestive system. Bobbie gave her the note to mail to Santa, and after reading it, Debby posted the letter on the Crohn's and Colitis UK Facebook page.

Here's the post:

And here's a transcript of the note:

Dear Santa,

Please if you can make my mums life better and make her not feel ill all the time, I would really appreciate it.

Just PLEASE!!

Make her life more and more better, it hurts to watch her suffer, so please make it better.

If I had one wish in the whole world it would be to help.

Hopefully Debby still mailed the letter after posting it.

Thank you, kitties, for bringing a moment of desperately needed levity to the international stage. While this isn't the first funny moment to come out of the summit of the world's most powerful nations, rolling coverage of the G20 Summit in Turkey caught these little wanderers roaming around, looking for a place to grandstand. Or poop. 

The cats are reportedly strays who were eventually shooed off by organizers, which is a shame. A lot of people would probably be interested in adopting such politically savvy animals. Put the "cat" back in Washington Fat Cats!

Justin Bieber posted a tribute on Twitter for Thomas Ayad, an international product manager for Universal's Mercury Records label and friend of Bieber's. Ayad was killed in the terror attacks during the Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Bataclan theatre in Paris. As Paris and the world continue to reel from the attacks, Bieber is one of many artists to thank Ayad for his work and contributions to his music:  

Still thinking about Paris and my friend Thomas that we lost in the tragedy. He was a part of the team for years and I wish would've had more time to thank him. Make sure to appreciate people while you have them. Thanks Thomas for everything you did for me. You are appreciated and missed. Thoughts and prayers are with your family & friends #PrayForParis

Keith Richards also posted a tribute to Ayad on Instagram:

My heartfelt condolences go out to the family and friends of Thomas Ayad. Words cannot express the horror of what happened in Paris. I am horrified by the tragic events that took place in Paris last Friday night.

It speaks volumes about Ayad when two of the biggest names in music tip their hats to his work. He was clearly a highly valued and respected member of the music industry who will be missed.

Perhaps to make up for the disappointing controversy that was Donald Trump's tenure as host, Saturday Night Live has announced a truly joyous lineup for its last show of 2015: a dual-hosting gig for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.

The Christmas show is often the best of the year, and as the half-season finale it usually gets the highest-profile hosts (or the hosts the cast enjoys the most, like Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, or Justin Timberlake), along with the premiere and the finale. Maybe this year Amy Poehler and Kate McKinnon can have a Hillary Clinton-off with Tina Pay judging as Sarah Palin! As a reminder of how good this will be, here are the pair hosting the Golden Globes earlier this year:

A chain of U.K. stores called John Lewis has pulled a line of pencils from its shelves after customers complained that they were perpetuating stereotypes about women. That's right. As difficult as it is to believe, people still use pencils.

These particular "word-scratching sticks" (as the kids today call them) are the Abigail Warner "For Her" pencils, which are hot pink and come emblazoned with a variety of messages designed to appeal to fashion-forward young women. Instead, those messages have outraged women of all ages. Once you see them, you'll probably understand why. Or not.

Internet commenters felt that the sentiments expressed on the pencils were stereotypical and reductive. Inscriptions like "girl boss," "glitter and bling," and "buy the shoes!" made some feel that these would-be instruments of self-expression were actually setting them back. The charge to erase these from stores was led by journalist Hannah Dunleavy, who raked John Lewis over the coals in an open letter published in Standard Issue magazine. Dunleavy wrote:

Dear John Lewis,

Thanks so much for the new range of pencils designed especially for women on sale in your Cambridge branch. I haven’t had the opportunity to purchase any as I feel I should seek my husband’s approval first and unfortunately I’ve yet to meet him.

Later on, she added:

Yes indeed, if you are heading to an important meeting, nothing says ‘respect me’ more than a pink pencil with the words Girl Boss on. I only hope no one makes the mistake of taking the ‘Buy The Shoes!’ pencil into a meeting and has to leave to go shopping. Can you imagine!

But seriously, women love shoes, don’t they? And glitter and bling and smelling roses. It’s a wonder we get anything done at all.

That's some high-octane Internet sarcasm. On Twitter, others joined Dunleavy's cause.

But others were not convinced.

It's worth noting that Abigail Warner also carries a collection of "For Him" pencils not sold at John Lewis, bearing inscriptions like "Hell yeah," "smooth," and "best in show."

Are these gender-segregated stereotypical pencils part of a larger conspiracy to set back the cause of feminism, or are they just a dumb product for dummies to buy? The answer to that is a matter of perspective, but one thing is clear: this is the most publicity pencils have had in 30 years. Enjoy it while you can, Big Pencil! Your days are numbered (specifically, #2).

A father explained the Paris attacks to his son, and it feels staged even though it's not. Reporters from Le Petit Journal, a French TV news show, were interviewing the people paying tribute to the victims of the Bataclan attacks when they came across this father and son. The reporter asks the son whether or not he understands what happened, to which he responds that "mean" people carried out the attack and that his family now needs to move because of it. His father corrects him, explaining that they are not moving; "Paris is [their] home" and that they are going to match the mean peoples' guns with flowers and candles (referencing the shrine by the concert hall).

Très precieux.

Mississippi volunteer firefighter Patrick Hardison was so badly burned in the line of duty 14 years ago that he lost his entire face. Now, a decade and a half later, doctors at New York University's Langone Medical Center gave Hardison the most extensive face transplant in history, and the results are nothing short of amazing.  

It was 2001 when the roof of a burning building in Mississippi collapsed on Hardison, causing him to lose his eyelids, ears, lips, most of his nose, his hair and his eyebrows. During the 26 hour surgery, Doctors at NYU were able to successfully attach a donor face and give Patrick his eyesight back. The donor was 26-year-old New York artist David Rodebaugh, who passed away after a biking accident in Brooklyn. Thanks to this generous donation, Patrick will be able to have a new lease on life. Watch the inspiring video here: 

It's been 3 months since the surgery, and Patrick is still in New York recovering, but he plans to return home for Thanksgiving, where his friends and family will be as happy to see him as he will to finally see them again.

Redditor KarlRyker is a bit unusual when it comes to self-pleasuring—not in terms of his viewing preferences, but because he's been meticulously recording data on his frequent onanism for the past six months. (Onanism is an old-timey word for masturbation, so congrats on learning that today.) Over the past 183 days, KarlRyker noted such factors as length of session, frequency of sessions, time of day, day of the week, how often he uses porn, what type of porn he uses, and so on. He put his findings all into one easy-to-follow chart that you could probably scroll down using one hand, which is presumably how Karl does all of his computing. It will fill you with a profound sense of awe and discomfort.

If this is what it takes to get people interested in math, so be it.

Online bargain retailer Overstock.com has been hoarding end-of-days supplies for its employees, including a 30-day supply of food and a distribution system to pay and feed employees in case the banking and payments systems collapse. They allegedly have a $10 million stash of gold and silver. It's impressive, and also means Overstock is the only company similar to that crazy conspiracy theorist uncle in your family.

The CEO of Overstock, Patrick Byrne, explained why they're more than prepared:

I want a system that can survive a three-month freeze. If the whole thing collapses I want our system to continue paying people, we want to be able to survive a shutdown of the banking system.

Part of the reason this is known to exist is because of regulatory filings listing the company's financial assets. Precious metals in that quantity take swings with the market and impact Overstock's overall wealth. Byrne reports that they're hoarding this pile of precious metals at a secret facility in the same state as their corporate headquarters:

It’s in a safe space in Utah. Utah has a lot of safe places. 

Nothing wacky or suspicious about the phrase "Utah has a lot of safe places." What else might they have buried out there? 

After the Paris terrorist attacks on Friday, a Canadian Sikh man was surprised to discover that a photoshopped picture of himself was circulating online, labeling him as one of the terrorists. The picture spread on Saturday, along with claims that "one Islamic State attacker in #ParisAttacks was a sikh convert to Islam." Some questioned the veracity of the image, however, because it looked photoshopped, and there were North American plugs in the bathroom.

Soon after the images began circulating, the man, Veerender Jubbal, discovered what was happening and took to Twitter to set things straight:

Thankfully, several media outlets picked this up and started showing Jubbal's original selfie and the doctored image side by side:

Jubbal is a noted opponent of Gamergate, and he initially speculated that some Gamergate supporters might be responsible for the editing of his image:

Sure enough, Vice has confirmed that the image was made by Gamergate supporters, but months before the Paris attacks. Unfortunately, multiple news outlets still picked up this doctored image. Jubbal is now working to set things straight, while, thankfully, maintaining some good self-esteem:

Ethiopia has a lot to offer in style inspiration from the last hundred years. This woman's hair is beautiful when it's big and flying free, but she also sure knows how to rock a scarf. Any hair accessory really. This may be the first time you look at someone and think, "Hmm, two gold scrunchies, one on top of the other? I must try it." 

They also keep the make-up very clean and simple. Except for in the 80s. No one escapes the 80s without eye shadow.