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Laughter is one of the most natural impulses in humans. Most babies start to laugh out loud at around 3 to 4 months, far earlier than they are able to speak or walk. Expressing enjoyment or delight comes naturally to us, but we’re not the only creatures who communicate with giggles.

Researchers at UCLA have identified 65 species of animals who make “play vocalizations,” or what we would consider laughter. Some of those vocalizations were already well documented—we’ve known for a while that apes and rats laugh—but others may come as a surprise. Along with a long list of primate species, domestic cows and dogs, foxes, seals, mongooses and three bird species are prone to laughter as well. (Many bird species can mimic human laughter, but that’s not the same as making their own play vocalizations.)

Primatologist and UCLA anthropology graduate student Sasha Winkler and UCLA professor of communication Greg Bryant shared their findings in an article in the journal Bioacoustics.

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The authors explored various play vocalization sounds, recording them as noisy or tonal, loud or quiet, high- or low-pitched, short or long, a single call or rhythmic pattern.

But really, what we want to see is what animal laughter sounds like from various species, right? While the researchers said that it can be hard to document laughter in the wild, especially among animals with quieter vocalizations, we do have some examples captured on video.

Check out these foxes laughing like little kids:

Or maybe little kids on helium. How fun is that?

Ever seen a bonobo chimp laugh? Just as cute.

I’m not sure if tickling a baby bonobo is sweet or torturous, though these researchers surely know what they’re doing. It’s always delightful to see the instinctual playfulness of primates.

Laughter in some animals isn’t as audibly apparent as it is in these foxes and chimps, though. Researchers from Humboldt University of Berlin found that rats laugh when they are tickled—and appear to enjoy tickling, as they seek it out—but their vocalizations are ultrasonic, so it’s hard to hear them without special instruments.

The UCLA researchers shared that the study of laughter in animals can help us better understand our own evolutionary behavior.

“This work lays out nicely how a phenomenon once thought to be particularly human turns out to be closely tied to behavior shared with species separated from humans by tens of millions of years,” Bryant said, according to UCLA.

“When we laugh, we are often providing information to others that we are having fun and also inviting others to join,” Winkler said. “Some scholars have suggested that this kind of vocal behavior is shared across many animals who play, and as such, laughter is our human version of an evolutionarily old vocal play signal.”

Raise your hand if you just want to see a cow laughing for real now.

This article first appeared on 1.14.22

As the old saying goes, one person’s trash is another one’s treasure.

Even though people can easily buy used items on eBay, the thrift store business thrives in America, bringing in an estimated $10 billion annually. At a time when the economy is shaky, thrift stores are a recession-proof business. When times are tough, people love to find a deal, and there’s never any end to the fashionistas who roam thrift stores looking for a rare find.

San Francisco surfer and self-proclaimed thrift store junkie Bryan Dickerson has turned his passion for rare treasures into an Instagram page with over 246,000 followers. Thrift Store Art showcases the most bizarre things that thrifters find in stores and leans heavily into strange-looking works of art and clothing with questionable sayings. His crowds of followers send him countless strange finds every day, and he rewards them by calling them rude names in the comments.

But for Dickerson, it’s all in fun.

He told Bored Panda that the idea of Thrift Store Art is “not to bash art but to expand what can be considered as art—clothing, album art, book graphics, vacation souvenirs.” Dickerson’s foray into thrift store content was a much-needed break from his job as the editor of a news website.

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“I wanted a space where I could post fan art of Tom Selleck and say that it’s Pat Sajak or claim that every post is our ‘first post ever and still our favorite!’” he told Bored Panda.

Here are 13 of the best finds from Thrift Store Art and they cover everything from odd-looking rock stars to a truly epic portrait of a sad Barack Obama.

1.

This appears to be a work of art celebrating a kind-looking lady with three beautiful cats and a husband that loves to light up a Camel while sitting shirtless in his Lazy Boy.

2.

It’s either Elvis Presley after he went a few rounds with Muhammad Ali or an impersonator with a rather large nose.

3.

“Chewy loves the little children. All of the children of the world.”

​4.

The Kennedy brothers as remembered by someone with some serious issues with depth perception.

5.

A pillow of former President George W. Bush admiring Jesus Christ of Nazareth. This probably helped a lot of people sleep easily in the early aughts.

​6.

It’s either a coffee mug of E.T.: The Extra-terrestrial or a monkey missing an arm. You decide.

7.

This is truly an impressive beehive. Priscilla Presley would totally be jealous.

8.

The artist took a big swing at capturing the majesty of Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury, but the piece falls a little flat. It could be that it looks like the microphone is attached to an upright vacuum cleaner.

9.

David Bowie’s French passport was located in a thrift store in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

10.

The guy on top is clearly John Lennon and beneath him, Paul McCartney. But the other two don’t resemble Beatles at all. It’s more like John Oates from Hall and Oates and Sonny Bono. This must have been for some Monsters of Rock-themed Ice Capades show.

11.

This is the look Willie Nelson gives people when they owe him money.

12.

It’s either former president Barack Obama or Moe Howard of “The Three Stooges” after a lousy round of golf.

13.

This painting appears to be a tribute to a dog that really needs some water.

Gyms are communal spaces where people can come to improve their health, fitness and/or overall well-being.

However, it’s no secret that many gyms have also become a production studio of sorts where influencers can set up a tripod to demonstrate the most cutting-edge squatting technique or where the average Joe can take that obligatory gym selfie to prove that the workout did, in fact, happen.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with either of these activities. However, they have sparked a new kind of behavior in gymgoers where they feign extreme frustration if folks walk from one machine to the next or grab a piece of equipment and, heaven forbid, enter the frame.

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Take for instance a video shared to Reddit by u/ASTATINE_628, where we first see several cuts of a young woman at the gym, seemingly perturbed that people are continuously walking through her frame in her video.

The clip then cuts to a guy who breaks down what’s wrong with this scenario in a very clear and concise way.

“This sense of entitlement has gotten out of hand,” he said, noting that “for you to get upset because there’s people simply in your video going about their workout, not bothering you, minding their own business, is ridiculous.”

To act like she owns the gym.
by u/ASTATINE_628 in therewasanattempt

He certainly has a point. Of course, when personal space is actually being infringed upon, like when someone is facing harassment, that’s a different story. But in this case, as the man stated, there is no wrongdoing by simply existing.

The man then summed it all up with a short and sweet reminder about common decency. Or maybe not-so-common, since we’re needing reminders.

“Unless your name is on that gym, your filming is never a priority over other people. They pay the same gym membership that you do. If you can’t film responsibly, if you can’t respect other people in a shared space, you don’t belong filming at all,” he said.

Really, this behavior stems from something larger than modern-day gym culture. We film ourselves a lot these days, and often in public. This has undoubtedly caused a shift in how we view personal boundaries in the outside world, with both positive and negative effects.

On the one hand, it can be fun and self-esteem-boosting to treat your life as one big video diary. On the other hand, we bring strangers unwillingly into our orbit, treating them as punching bags, entertainment, or, in the case of the miffed gymgoers, nuisances. We vainly stop treating other people like fellow humans sharing life on this crazy blue planet. No video seems worth forgetting that.

Even for those who have never set foot into a gym, and never will, this is a poignant reminder to not lose our humanity as our relationship with social media grows. It’s perfectly fine to tap into “main character energy.” Let’s just keep in mind that really, we’re all part of the same story.

Damson Idris is quickly becoming a household name. The British actor has garnered much of a following through his roles on Snowfall, which is in its final season, and Prime Video’s Swarm.

Idris credits his success as an actor partly to the generosity of rapper Jay-Z.

Over the years, it has been rumored that Jay helped Idris get his green card. Idris clarified the rumors in an interview on the 360 With Speedy show, but noted it may not have happened as other fans imagined it.

“Hov didn’t offer that up. I had to ask him,” He said. “But he’s done many things for me over the years. He’s always supported me. He supports everyone. He supports so many people that you don’t even know. Like, genuinely I should tell everyone this right now: If you ever run into Jay-Z, just say thank you and keep it moving because he is definitely a pioneer of the culture, but of everything.”

While Idris didn’t share all of the details about how Jay helped him get his green card, he also used his airtime to thank other people who helped in the process. He also noted that he plans to pay their generosity forward in the future.

“I won’t tell you how it happened ’cause there’s a couple more favors that I’m gonna need in the future,” he said, jokingly, “but yeah, he hooked me up with that. Rich Paul did, too. Tommy Schlamme, Eric Schrier — a bunch people hooked me up. They’re people who just believe in me, believe this journey that I’m on and I’m gonna repay the favor to the people coming behind me, too.”

Check out the full interview above.

Keanu Reeves is a man of only so many words, and yet they are worth more than your college education because he’s John freakin’ Wick! While it might be silly that the latest John Wick installment features the titular character using less than 400 words consider this: Keanu Reeves doesn’t need words to act because he is just that good.

In a new report, the fine folks at Wall Street Journal decided to take time out of their day to count every word Reeves says in the hit assassin franchise, and the results might surprise you. Or they might not if you’ve seen the movies– there is a lot of hitting, many guns, and not a lot of talking. Like A Quiet Place but with more globe-trotting, and the enemies are just men, not aliens. Still scary, though.

According to the report, in the first installment, clocking in at 101 minutes, features Mr. Reeves saying a grand 484 words. Most of them were in this scene alone, which was worth the wait.

As for John Wick 4, which is nearly 169 minutes, the fourth movie pushes features “just 380 words by Wick,” while “about 10% of them are featured in the movie’s trailer,” WSJ said, adding this fun little tidbit: “Wick says more in that 2.5 minute clip than he does in the first 25 minutes of the movie itself.” Maybe they spent the “word budget” on a French accent coach for Bill Skarsgard. It clearly worked!

In reality, it seems like Reeves was the one who inspired the cuts. Director Chad Stahelski explained, “Mr. Reeves stripped out roughly half the dialogue written for his character in the initial script.” Making him less talkative actually adds to the mysteriousness of his character. It raises so many unique questions, like “Does John Wick Own A Dictionary?” and “Has John Wick Ever Played Wordle?”

That might not seem like too many words for the main guy to say, and perhaps it would be concerning if this movie revolved around Wick’s ability to write a speech but it’s not. People are coming to the movies to watch Keanu Reeves kick and shot his way around the world, no matter how many words he uses.

By the way, at this point, this here blog uses more words than Reeves said in John Wick 4, which is fine because I am not Keanu Reeves.

(Via Deadline, WSJ)

Most TV shows that lasted a single season aren’t remembered fondly, or remembered at all. But not every TV show is Freaks and Geeks.

The Paul Feig series is an all-time classic that launched the careers of its young cast, including Seth Rogen, James Franco, Linda Cardellini, Jason Segel, and Busy Philipps, as well as John Francis Daley, Samm Levine, and Martin Starr. Those last three, the titular “geeks,” recently reunited to promote Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which Francis Daley co-wrote and directed. It’s the Carlos the Dwarf reference that got me.

You can watch the video below.

“I first discovered it as a teenager on Freaks and Geeks. My character was supposed to be a big fan of it. So we played a quick campaign with the cast,” Francis Daley told Uproxx about his introduction to Dungeons and Dragons. “It was my favorite episode, not because of the Dungeons & Dragons component, but because we got to see Jason Segel do a disco dance. Then I picked it back up as an adult about two years before we started on this movie.”

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which stars Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, and Hugh Grant, comes out on March 31.

Modest Mouse has announced a new tour for this summer — and it is anything but shy. They will be co-headlining with Pixies, with dates across North America kicking off in August. Cat Power is opening the shows.

The band recently just wrapped the sold-out 25th-anniversary tour for their 1997 album, The Lonesome Crowded West. They are also playing a handful of dates with Slow Pulp, Franz Ferdinand, and Bully starting in May.

Tickets for this co-headlining run go on sale this Friday (March 31) at 10 a.m. local time. More information, along with purchasing links, can be found here.

Continue scrolling for a complete list of Modest Mouse and Pixies’ tour dates.

08/20 — Asbury Park, NJ @ Stone Pony Summerstage
08/21 — New York, NY @ The Rooftop at Pier 17
08/22 — New York, NY @ The Rooftop at Pier 17
08/24 — Bridgeport, CT @ Hartford HealthCare Amphitheatre
08/25 — Cooperstown, NY @ Brewery Ommegang
08/26 — North Adams, MA @ MASS MoCA
08/28 — Lewiston, NY @ Artpark Amphitheater
08/29 — Indianapolis, IN @ TCU Amphitheater at White River State Park
08/30 — Chicago, Il @ Salt Shed – Outdoors
09/02 — Vail, CO @ Gerald R. Ford Amphitheatre
09/04 — Boise, ID @ Outlaw Field at the Idaho Botanical Garden
09/06 — Spokane, WA @ Pavilion at Riverfront
09/07 — Bonner, MT @ Kettlehouse Amphitheatre
09/08 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
09/09 — Vancouver, BC @ Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre
09/12 — Troutdale, OR @ McMenamins Edgefield
09/13 — Troutdale, OR @ McMenamins Edgefield
09/15 — Napa, CA @ Oxbow RiverStage
09/16 — San Diego, CA @ Gallagher Square

Rep. Tim Burchett (seen above while having a word with fellow GOP colleague Marjorie Taylor-Greene during a House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing on freedom of speech and whether Twitter censored tweets about Hunter Biden’s laptop) is naturally a Capitol Hill focus for reporters this week. The reason for this shining light is not a positive one, given that Burchett’s home state of Tennessee is reeling from the Nashville school massacre, in which a shooter killed four people (including a 9-year-old girl) before turning the gun on themselves.

Burchett remains very much in line with the GOP colleagues who simply tweet about thoughts and prayers in the face of these tragedies and call it a day. Marjorie Taylor Greene even suggested that “hormones” were responsible, and “[e]veryone can stop blaming guns now.” In other words, there won’t be much serious discussion about gun control on Capitol Hill, and Burchett offered his blunt words on the subject. Essentially, he feels like there’s no action that could possibly improve this situation:

“We’re not gonna fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals, and my daddy fought in the Second World War, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he said, ‘If somebody wants to take you out and doesn’t mind losing their life, there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.’”

Yes, this sentiment is pretty much that article from The Onion in slightly different words.

On social media, people are not here for this further inaction and are disgusted that Burchett seemingly likened the act of going to school to WWII. They are sick and tired, not only of being sick and tired, but by Burchett’s metaphorical shrugging. Would Tennessee actually vote him out of office, though?

Burchett will be up for reelection in 2024 in a very red district.

Boygenius — the supergroup of Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus — are unveiling their debut full-length The Record this week. So far, we have singles “$20,” “Emily I’m Sorry,” “True Blue,” and “Not Strong Enough.” The hype was elevated when the trio gave an impromptu performance at an Austin airport for SXSW.

If you missed that baggage claim gig, you’re in luck because Boygenius just announced a tour. It kicks off next month in Pomona, California. Carly Rae Jepsen, Bartees Strange, and Claud are just some of the artists that’ll be on the road with them between April and August.

Find ticket information here and check out the tour dates below.

04/12 — Pomona, CA @ Fox Theater
04/15 — Indio, CA @ Coachella Music & Arts Festival
04/22 — Indio, CA @ Coachella Music & Arts Festival
06/02 — San Diego, CA @ Thrive Park at Snapdragon Stadium !
06/03 — Los Angeles, CA @ Brookside at the Rosebowl !
06/04 — Stanford, CA @ Frost Amphitheater at Stanford !
06/06 — Phoenix, AZ @ Arizona Financial Theatre *
06/08 — Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall *
06/09 — Dallas, TX @ Texas Trust CU Theater Grounds !
06/10 — New Orleans, LA @ City Park !
06/11 — Atlanta, GA @ Central Park !
06/13 — Asheville, NC @ ExploreAsheville.com Arena *
06/14 — Wilmington, NC @ Live Oak Bank Pavilion *
06/16 — Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post Pavilion !
06/17 — New York, NY @ Forest Hills Stadium !
06/18 — Boston, MA @ The Stage at Suffolk Downs !
06/20 — Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE +
06/21 — Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage ^+
06/23 — Columbus, OH @ Kemba Live! Festival !
06/24 — Chicago, IL @ Riis Park !
06/25 — Nashville, TN @ Centennial Park !
07/28 — Vancouver, BC @ PNE Amphitheater % =
07/29 — George, WA @ The Gorge Amphitheatre % =
07/30 — Bend, OR @ Hayden Homes Amphitheater % =
08/01 — Bonner, MT @ Kettlehouse Amphitheater =
08/02 — Boise, ID @ Outlaw Field at the Idaho Botanical Garden =
08/03 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Library Square =
08/05 — Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre =

! Re:SET Concert Series with Clairo, Dijon, and Bartees Strange
* with Bartees Strange
^ with Broken Social Scene
% with Carly Rae Jepsen
+ with Claud
= with Illuminati Hotties

The Record is out 3/31 via Interscope. Find more information here.

There’s no denying that Bad Bunny is one of the biggest music stars in the world. But, like all human beings, Benito simply asks that you respect his privacy. A fan of his learned this the hard way this past January, when she came up to meet him, and then proceeded to record a video of them walking together. In a viral clip, Bad Bunny was seen throwing the fan’s phone into a nearby body of water.

In a new interview with Time shared today (March 28), Bad Bunny stood by his choice, noting that he was uncomfortable by the fan’s approach.

“If you’re coming up like you’re going to rob me, then yes, it’ll bother me,” he said. “Why do you want a picture with me? Because I’m the Statue Of Liberty?”

Over the course of his career, Bad Bunny has dominated the charts with reggaeton music — never having released a song in English. Elsewhere in the interview, he revealed that he didn’t care much to learn more English until recently. However, he noted that he would only record and put out a song in English when the time’s right.

“The day I feel like I need to do a song in English, ” he said, “I’ll do it because I feel it.”

Read the full cover story here.