Man Links

What’s the point? This week there was only one Man Link — just one Man who Linked his way into the highest office in the United States of America. One man who, despite all odds (or, perhaps, just our best guesses) rallied his fellow Man Links to cast their votes in his favor. Whether he actually wants to be the president or just really, really enjoys the concept of winning — as many men do! — we may never know. We are left only with questions, like why People magazine — after calling him out for sexually assaulting one of their very own writers — chose to tweet this:

“He’s hired!” they tweeted with blind joy, utter insanity, convenient forgetfulness, shameless pandering… well, you name it.

And yes, we’ve done it before, but there’s no way any Man Link from this week could be as bad as this particular Man Link, so here are a few good links to perhaps wash away some of the hurt.

A snail named Jeremy found love:

Jeremy is a “lefty” snail, meaning his shell swirls counterclockwise and his sex organs are on the left side of his head. He’s a mirror image of other members of his species — and he wouldn’t be able to mate with normal snails because their reproductive organs wouldn’t line up.

Someone posted a slew of favorites from Obama’s longtime photographer. Here is my favorite:

Scientist are tickling rats (and rats are loving it):

Not only did they seek out the researchers’ hands to get tickled, and emit ultrasonic calls that are considered the rat’s equivalent of laughter, they also made joyful leaps.

That’s English for freudensprungen, the common, and completely wonderful, scientific term for the behavior, as observed in many animals.

Blac Chyna did the Mannequin Challenge while in the hospital, getting ready to give birth:

https://twitter.com/freddyamazin/status/796858485866565632

Weed is now (recreationally!) legal in California:

Europe almost landed a working probe on Mars:

In late 2014, after nearly everyone had given up on the lost lander, Beagle 2 was spotted in a series of eight images taken by the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The blurry, pixelated photos showed what appeared to be an intact lander, along with its parachute and heat shield nearby. But even after applying advanced image processing techniques, scientists were unable determine the configuration of the lander — the photos were simply too low resolution. The question of what the hell went wrong remained open.

Scientists are researching “splash-free” urinals:

There has been little work carried out into splash avoidance. It has been demonstrated that droplets in a vacuum don’t splash, and droplets hitting a thin, elastic membrane are much less likely to splash. Moving the substrate at high speeds may suppress splash on one side of the drop but enhance splash on the other side. No one as yet has looked at how simple coatings could provide all-round splash protection.

Unicode approved both a hijab-wearing and a breastfeeding emoji (oh, and pie):

Billy Bob Thorton agrees that he’d never be “good enough” for Angelina Jolie:

The problem was, he says, “I never felt good enough for her.” She was always going off to meet with the U.N. people or the president or the adoption agencies, and he just wanted to stay home and watch baseball. Still, that was okay. What wasn’t okay was that they’d get invited to George Lucas’s house or something, “and I’m real uncomfortable around rich and important people.”

And the last thing? If you’re feeling shitty, just know that you’re not alone:

However, some findings are consistent across red, blue, and swing states. Among them is the fact that increased searches explicitly for “presidential election” seem to be associated with searches for depression and anxiety, which suggests that the 2016 presidential election cycle may have been a source of emotional distress for Americans, irrespective of political leaning.

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MEL