The guys at Mental Floss put together a cool video that reveals the real names of famous characters. I didn’t know a lot of these.

My favorite: Aloysius Snuffleupagus.

Fine Brothers Properties filmed several children as they watched the “Just Checking” Cheerios commercial, which features an interracial couple. The children were interviewed following the commercial about their reaction.

The outcome shows that for matters of racism and hate, children should be the ones reminding their parents how to behave. So great.

(via: Scott Stevens)

Joel Housman, on the future relase of iOS 7:

Remember people do not like change. People are superficial and vain, and thus react more loudly to things they can’t avoid seeing. The changes being made in OS 7 are easy to see, and thus the reaction will be loud.

Given the drastic changes in the new operating system, I bet Housman is right.

Nilay Patel, writing for The Verge:

AT&T unveiled its new Next plan today, which allows you to pay a small monthly fee for the privilege of upgrading your phone every year without a down payment. It’s an obvious response to T-Mobile’s Jump plan, which costs $10 a month and allows for an upgrade every six months. Both plans sound like a great idea: you’ll get a new phone much faster than before, without having to pay full price up front or resigning your contract every time.

The big differences with AT&T’s Next plan are that it costs anywhere from $15 to $50 a month depending on which phone you buy, and also that it’s an absolutely clear ripoff designed to cheat customers into paying full price for their phone without actually buying anything.

No doubt that AT&T’s Next is simply their next ripoff.

Matthew Inman, with an awesome six-page spread for The Oatmeal, on why he runs. One of my favorite panels surrounds a late-night run in Japan:

I’ve always considered the question to be “Why am I alive? Why am I here? What’s the point of me?”

And to that I say:

Who cares? Forget the why?

You are in a raging forest full of beauty and agony and magical grapey beverages and lightning storms and demon bees.

This is better than the why.

I relate to a lot of what Inman says. My favorite thing to do while working out is simply to think.

Ross A. Lincoln, writing for Movieline, on the huge robots in Pacific Rim:

We want them so badly, but could we have them in real life? Unfortunately, hell no. Not because of budgetary constraints, frustratingly missing confirmation of alien life, or the lack of a decent fuel source. There’s a bigger problem facing these robots than any alien invasion: Physics.

Yes, the terrible dictator that ruins everything from warp drive to immortality also has a bone to pick with Del Toro’s supersized combatants. And unfortunately, as inherently awesome as it sounds, having giant robots brawling with giant monsters in regular ol’ planet earth gravity runs right up against the twin problems of weight distribution and the nefarious square cube law.

Glenn Greenwald, reporting for The Guardian:

Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users’ communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company’s own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.

The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month.

Basically, never assume anything related to your digital identity is safe.

xkcd answers the following question:

How quickly would the ocean’s drain if a circular portal 10 meters in radius leading into space was created at the bottom of Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the ocean? How would the Earth change as the water is being drained?

Short answer - it would take a long time.

Today was a whirlwind day. The kind of day that starts off normal enough, but then turns into one that you will never forget.

I was about to head home when I got the call. Melissa, my younger sister, had just delivered her baby. I was caught off-guard because she was scheduled to be induced on Monday. Apparently things had transpired very quickly, which is why we were all scrambling to get to the hospital. In the afternoon, my sister complained that she didn’t feel well and was taken to the hospital. The baby was not wanting to leave his comfy home, so a C-section was ordered. Within an hour -and-a-half of arriving at the hospital, her son was born.

To all my friends, family, and readers, I introduce John Mark Gibbs - my awesome nephew. He weighed in at 8 lbs. 11 oz. and was 21.5" long.

I fell in love with John as soon as I saw him.

The entire time, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. Everything was so small, but so recognizable. He was like a perfectly miniaturized human.

Look at those little feet.

My happiest moment was getting to hold John so early in his young life. I was a bit timid because I’ve never been around babies. Luckily my mom, wife, and sister all helped talk me through it. Needless to say, he grew on me. I’m already planning on ways he and I can get into some trouble.

Getting to hold such a new life was so awesome.

Most importantly, both mom and baby are healthy and doing great. I apologize for the rambling, gushing post - it was an unexpectedly life-changing day. I’m sure I’ll annoy you with more pictures of my nephew in the coming weeks. For now, though, I’ll let John rest with his amazing mother.

Mom and baby sleep.

Eli Saslow, writing for The Washington Post, on a new program in rural Tennessee to distribute food to poor children:

And late last month came the newest iteration: a school bus retrofitted into a bread truck bouncing along a potholed road near the Blue Ridge Mountains. It parked in a valley of 30 single-wide trailers — some rotting in the sun, others swallowed by weeds and mosquitoes alongside the Nolichucky River. The driver opened his window and listened to the utter silence. “It feels like a ghost town,” he said.

A 5-year-old girl saw the dust trail of the bus and pedaled toward it on a red tricycle. Three teenage boys came barefoot in swimsuits. A young mother walked over from her trailer with an infant daughter in one arm and a lit cigarette in the other. “Any chance there will be leftover food for adults?” she asked.

It was almost 1 p.m. For some, this would be the first meal of the day. For others, the last.

The driver opened the bus door and made the announcement he would repeat at six more trailer parks on this day.

“Lunch is served,” he said.

In the United States, we like to believe third-world conditions don’t exist within our borders. This article is a sobering reminder that poverty is still a huge problem, no matter how hard we all pretend otherwise.