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The death of a television network can cause quite a stir in the TV world, especially when that network is beloved by fans, but Spike TV has died and I don't think anybody really cares.

The channel once billed as "the First Network for Men" is now the Paramount Network, so the person running Spike TV's Twitter account bid the channel a not-so-fond farewell by revealing the network's darkest secrets.

I was baked when I pitched 1000 Ways to Die. Those episodes are mostly based on my nightmares.

— SPIKE (@spike) January 17, 2018

The embittered employee spent January 16th tweeting all kinds of wacky stuff about the network that is still up on the SPIKE Twitter page, because apparently Spike is dead so nobody gives a crap about their Twitter page.

I clogged up the 4th stall in the 7th floor men’s room over 30 times last year.

— SPIKE (@spike) January 16, 2018

Of course, the whole thing could be a publicity stunt, but if it is who stands to profit from these kinds of ridiculous confessions?

I lost my virginity in one of the storage spaces from Auction Hunters.

— SPIKE (@spike) January 16, 2018

See more from Spike TV is Shutting Down and Their Twitter Person is Having a Field Day here

Even though it's easy to shoot your own digital photos and get them printed any way you'd like people still hire professional photographers to shoot their "special" photos because they think the pics will turn out better.

But before you throw money away on a terrible set of photos taken by a "professional" photographer you'd better have a look at these ridiculous retouched photos shared by Pam Dave Zaring.

Pam says she hired a pro photographer to shoot some nice pics of her family, but the final photos she received had been "retouched" by the pro, who admittedly had no clue how to retouch photos or how to take a professional-grade photo.

Looks to me like this pro has been hanging out with the pro who "restored" the Ecce Homo Jesus fresco  a few years back.

-Via Laughing Squid

I can't help but think of video games like Tomb Raider when I see pics of people exploring underwater caves, because the whole environment looks too fantastic to be real.

But there are plenty of real, and really beautiful, drowned caves out there that have yet to be discovered, and the Yucatan Peninsula is the place to go when underwater explorers are searching for flooded caves:

The low-altitude, limestone-laden expanse of the Yucatan peninsula is the perfect place for the formation of submerged underground caves—geological features the ancient Maya people referred to as “cenotes.”

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Divers with the Gran Acuífero Maya project led by Robert Schmittner have spent the last ten months trying to prove two massive underwater cave systems in the Yucatan are connected- the 163-mile-long Sac Actun and the 51-mile-long Dos Ojos.

And on January 10th their dedication paid off when they finally found the connection between the two caves, making it the largest known flooded cave system on Earth:

Prior to the discovery, the Ox Bel Ha system, located just south of Tulum, was ranked as the world’s largest at 167 miles (270 km). According to caving naming convention, when two cave systems are found to interconnect, the largest cave absorbs the smaller one. So the Dos Ojos system is no more, subsumed by the larger Sac Actun system.

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Read Divers In Mexico Have Discovered The World's Largest Flooded Cave at Gizmodo

Women are still struggling with issues of inequality and sexism even though we should have addressed and eliminated these wrongs long ago, but at least they don't have to wear the torturous clothing they had to wear in the 18th century!

Nowadays women can get dressed for work with ease, throwing on some light and comfortable clothes that don't chafe, constrict or weigh them down.

But back in the 18th century getting ready for work was a huge production that involved lots of lacing, layering and cinching, which puts the uncomfortableness of modern clothes into perspective.

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This episode in the series created by CrowsEyeProductions for the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool focuses on the morning routine of the working woman in the 1700s, and it's make you feel better about your morning routine!

Most kids wonder what it would be like to grow up overnight, because they think the life of a grown up means no school, no set bedtime and no rules, but these thoughts are usually fleeting because it's fun to be a kid.

But when they inevitably transform into young adults their childhood seems to float away on the wind, leaving nothing but memories and the trappings of youth- like their favorite teddy bear.

However, some kids don't want to let go of their childhood years, so they hang on as hard as they can until life forces them to let go...

Lili from TOM & HANI on Vimeo.

Lili is an absolutely stunning stop motion short film by Hani Dombe and Tom Kouris, with music by Gil Landau, that will make you want to get back in touch with your inner child.

Even though Amazon is one of the largest retailers in the world, pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars a year in profit, they hire seasonal workers to fill their boxes for cheap rather than paying a permanent workforce in their warehouses.

And many of these seasonal employees are seniors who should be retired but had to keep working after being bankrupted by the Great Recession of 2008, seniors who live in RVs and work 'til it hurts during the holiday season.

From the Amazon recruiting site:

The Amazon CamperForce program brings together a community of enthusiastic RV’ers who help make the holidays bright for customers of Amazon. As a CamperForce Associate, you’ll begin this seasonal assignment in early Fall and work until December 23rd. The program lasts 3-4 months in the winter, and your responsibilities will be in the areas of picking, packing, stowing, and receiving. …Amazon offers great pay, a paid completion bonus, paid referral bonuses, and paid campsites for its CamperForce associates.

CamperForce is a somewhat demoralizing documentary by Brett Story and Jessica Bruder of Field Of Vision about the workampers who help box up all those holiday orders for "$11 per hour, overtime, bonuses, paid campsites and free health coverage (after a waiting period)".

-Via Laughing Squid

When we see something we've never seen before we tend to think of the creator as an innovative and creative individual, and yet many of these creators should probably be referred to as appropriators rather than creators.

Most fans know George Lucas drew inspiration for Star Wars from the samurai films created by Akira Kurosawa, but did you know he also adopted many elements of the franchise from Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter series?

And Princess Leia's "totally unique" hairstyle was inspired by the twin buns worn by female Mexican Revolutionary fighter Clara De La Rocha.

People used to praise Michael Jackson for his "totally original" signature moves, but it appears the smooth criminal stole many of his signature moves from Broadway choreographer Bob Fosse.

See 17 'Original' Products That Are Actually Total Ripoffs here

Countries like Russia, the UK and China have chosen to use CCTV networks to monitor activity on their city streets and minimize crime by using the power of the "eye in the sky" to bring criminals to justice.

At the same time many of the citizens from these countries believe the CCTV network is an invasion of privacy and used by government organizations to keep tabs on everyone.

And honestly they're both right, since CCTV cameras cut down on crime but are also used to gather information on innocent civilians, so figuring out how to fool CCTV facial recognition software may be a way to fight tyranny rather than pure anarchy.

How long can a BBC reporter stay hidden from CCTV cameras in China? @TheJohnSudworth has been given rare access to put the world's largest surveillance system to the test pic.twitter.com/vLGQYN7ZB9

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) December 10, 2017

BBC reporter John Sudworth was able to elude China's CCTV cameras for a whopping seven minutes before authorities could zero in on his location. Not sure if that's good or bad, but it's certainly scary!

--Via DesignTAXI

Wherever there are people there are dogs coexisting with human populations that are as diverse as they are, and whether they're trying to please their masters or snatch what they can while the humans aren't looking dogs will always be by our side.

London-based street photographer Alan Schaller normally focuses on “the realities and diversities of human life", but as he traveled the world he noticed the dogs he met were pretty diverse too.

So Alan started focusing his lens on the dogs of the world, shifting his focus from man to man's best friend, but before he shoots he really gets to know his subject:

The process involves getting familiar with the dog first, creating some kind of a bond and gaining their trust. "I find dogs are in general more consistently friendly, unpredictable, and amusing than humans," says Schaller. "Almost every dog I have photographed, unless the scenario has been tragic, has made me laugh at some point when meeting it."

See Street Photographer Travels The World Portraying Very Different Personalities Of Dogs here

It's nearly 2020, and according to pre-21st century predictions of the future we're behind technologically because we don't have flying cars, fully automated homes or personal laser weaponry.

But what we do have are a bunch of scientific advancements that will make you excited for (or terrified of) the future, even if it isn't as flashy or exciting as we thought it would be.

In 2017 we were introduced to an incredibly cool yet equally creeping looking artificial womb:

For years we’ve been told that an artificial womb is possible, but in 2017 researchers from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia achieved a breakthrough that has us thinking it’s really going to happen.

In tests, six premature fetal lambs were placed in fluid-filled plastic containers resembling zip-lock bags. The lambs grew in the device as they would in a conventional womb, developing in a temperature controlled, near-sterile environment. They breathed in amniotic fluid, their hearts pumped blood through their umbilical cords into a gas exchange system outside of the bag, and monitors measured their vital signs, blood flow, and other important functions. The lambs, which were at the equivalent of the 23 to 24 week gestation stage of human preemies when they entered the bags, developed normally. The breakthrough offers a viable and potentially superior way of bringing premature babies to term, but it could still be decades before we see the technology applied to humans.

We were also re-introduced to Boston Dynamics' ATLAS, who can now do backflips and jump around all parkour style.

ATLAS seems to be preparing for the battlefields of the future, where he'll probably be joined by Boston Dynamics' newest robot, Handle, the free-wheelin' pony-bot.

These robots have come a really long way since being introduced just a few years ago, but have they already come too far?:

Also in 2017, robots started to teach other robots new skills, and this heavily armored robot was voted most likely to trigger the robopocalypse. Indeed, robots and drones got so scary in 2017 that the United Nations hosted a discussion on banning autonomous killing machines at a conference on conventional weapons.

See The Most Futuristic Predictions That Came True In 2017 at Gizmodo

There are thousands, if not millions, of pets sitting in pounds, shelters and rescue centers around the world, all of them just waiting for some kind humans to come and take them home.

It's important that as many pets as possible are adopted from pounds and shelters and given a better life, and to help expedite the process some pets have sadly taken to pretending to be purebreeds to make themselves look more adoptable.

But if you're going to adopt a pet don't be a breed snob, because mutts make awesome pets too!

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Take Me Home is a short and sweet CG film by Nair Archawattana and students from the Academy Of Arts University, and it reminded me why I love mutts so much- because many of them have an indomitable spirit!

Johnny Cash is one of the most famous musicians of all time, and even though he started out playing rockabilly he went on to transcend musical genres to garner an extremely diverse fan base.

But as it turns out hate groups like the KKK and white supremacists have hated Johnny Cash since his early days- because they mistakenly thought he was married to a black woman.

Sound like a stupid reason to hate a musician with such an amazing catalog of music? Welcome to the Jim Crow South of the 1960s.

It all started on October 4, 1965 when Johnny was arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border for trying to smuggle in a bunch of amphetamines and sedatives he'd bought off a dealer in Mexico:

Customs agents found 475 Equanil tablets and 688 Dexedrine capsules stashed in his guitar case and threw him in jail. Cash spent a night in jail and, two months later, plead guilty to the possession of illegal drugs.

He got off with a deferred sentence and a $1,000 fine—and had no idea that, as he walked down the courthouse steps in El Paso, Texas, with his wife Vivian, he was about to spark a firestorm.

An Associated Press photo of Cash and Vivian ran in newspapers the next day—and to some readers, it appeared that Vivian, an Italian-American woman who was rarely photographed, was black.

The National States Rights Party, an Alabama white supremacist group, republished the photo in its newspaper, The Thunderbolt, with an article that dripped with racist rhetoric. The money generated by Cash’s hit records, it claimed, went “to scum like Johnny Cash to keep them supplied with dope and negro women.”

Cash was harassed and boycotted by some Southern fans. “Johnny and I received death threats, and an already shameful situation was made infinitely worse,” recalled Vivian in her 2008 memoir.

In an October 1966 article, Variety described Cash as “the innocent victim of a targeted hate campaign in the south.” The “racial error,” wrote the anonymous author, had sparked boycotts and threats. “In the code of the south,” the article continued, “there is no greater crime than miscegenation.” At the time, interracial marriages were banned throughout the South.

Read Why Hate Groups Went After Johnny Cash In The 1960s here

The Resolutioners are out there, they're in our restaurants ordering salad and skipping carbs, they're in the clothing stores buying "goal pants" that are a size too small, but mostly they're in the gyms trying to burn off the pounds.

These takers of vows see every New Year as a chance to restart a good life and be reborn, and like a sweat-drenched phoenix they rise through sets of squats and run for their lives until the thrill wears off around February.

If you've ever wondered what kind of muscle menagerie you can expect to see if you head to the gym in January then these strange comic strips from SIR Artwork will fill you in, and may put you off New Year's resolutions forever!

See These Comics Perfectly Describe Everything Wrong With Gyms In January here

When tools get old and rusty they end up sitting in the back of our garage or tool shed for years before they're thrown out like trash, but where some see rust and decay artist Cindy Chinn sees character.

So Cindy uses these discarded old tools as an artistic medium, using a plasma torch to hand cut fun winter scenes into rusty shovel heads and a little light welding to put the whole scene together.

Cindy's tool-based sculptures aren't limited to snow shovel heads, she's also known for creating artwork out of saw blades, rakes and trowel heads, and the scenes on each one match the medium.

But seeing as how it's winter, and some people are becoming mighty tired of clearing snow right about now, these wintery snow shovel scenes seems like the most appropriate series for the season!

See I've Made Some Whimsical Winter Scenes From Old Snow Shovels here

We all want to feel special, and we also long for others to acknowledge how special we are and recognize the qualities that make us unique in the world, in other words acknowledge what makes us one-of-a-kind.

You know what else is unique and one-of-a-kind? A snowflake, and even though some people have tried to use snowflake as a derogatory term we know it's really a compliment and an acknowledgement of our unique beauty.

And there's something else you should know about "snowflakes"- we can be ice cold as needed, and if you try to diminish our specialness we'll cut ya! Figuratively speaking, of course...*wink*

-Via JHALLCOMICS