Felicia Day wants to be your friend.

She might be an adorkable TV starlet -- she’s been on "Buffy," and will appear soon on SyFy’s "Eureka" -- but she’s also the founder of a geeky web series that emphasizes its community forums as much as its shows.

She wasn’t always so social. In her new memoir, You’re Never Weird On The Internet, she recalls her childhood in the Deep South, where she felt isolated from other kids no thanks to her nerdy interests. She mostly found company in book characters, her cherished diary and the fictional comrades she encountered while gaming. But during the burgeoning days of the Internet, that all changed.

We spoke with Day about online communities, #GamerGate and the moral choices you encounter while roleplaying.

On keeping a private diary as a kid: 

"So I didn’t spend much time with other children as a kid. SURPRISE!," Day writes in You’re Never Weird On The Internet. "But it’s human instinct to connect, and I eventually found someone who would listen to me no matter how weird I was: my little pink diary." She goes on to relay her childhood and teenage musings about books, privacy and jelly shoes.

In our interview, I asked her how she thinks she would’ve fared if, instead of a diary, she grew up with the modern-day equivalent: a public blog. "I wouldn’t have known to keep things private," Day said. "And that anything you do can be used as ammunition against you. But at the same time, when you expose who you are, you grow from it."

On the Internet as a home for introverts:

As the founder of a web channel, Geek & Sundry, Felicia is a big supporter of the Internet as a safe house for those with no other social outlet to bond. I asked her whether the web’s role as a home for introverts makes other forms of connection -- such as reading books -- less necessary or relevant? Her response was a resounding "no."

"We congregate and create communities online, and those communities are based on our love for things, and the things we consume, fun or profound. Whereas before, you were confined to the people around you to influence what you consumed."

On struggling with video game addiction:

In a chapter titled, "Quirky Addiction = Still an Addiction," Day reveals the 12-hour days she’d devote to playing video games, damaging friendships all in the name of, "an alt-life as a level 60 warlock named Codex." In place of going to acting classes, she immersed herself in a roleplaying game, chatting often with fellow guild members. "It was like 'Cheers,'" she writes. "But where absolutely no one knew your name." 

Of the experience, she said, "It’s not inherent to gaming," and claimed she’d have watched too much TV or found another distraction to cope with feelings of listlessness. "I’d go to bed unhappy," she said. "A whole day had passed. It was fun at the time, but I took it to the extreme. I felt an emptiness on top of a bandaid."

On the invaluable role video games have played in her life as an artist:

Though she struggled with allowing games to take over other valuable aspects of her life, Day believes they’ve shaped her personality for the better, too. "I’m most attracted to projecting myself into virtual worlds," she said. "And going on adventures I’d never have as a person."

While playing games that involve creating an avatar, Day enjoys confronting morality tests embedded within the stories. "I don’t need a psychologist to tell me that my love of role-playing games is linked to my childhood quest for self," writes Day, who says when presented with a moral dilemma in virtual worlds, she opts to be the good guy. "I like killing virtual monsters," she writes.

When asked about whether her love of gaming has influenced her other artistic endeavors, such as writing, Day excitedly said yes. "In gaming you have these equal but different possible outcomes that you don’t have in, say, movies," she said. "It’s the only medium in entertainment that has that participation element."

On #GamerGate:

Day says the label "gamer" is one she identifies with strongly. So, naturally, she was wonderfully outspoken about the #GamerGate controversy, defending women gamers as an important part of the community. When asked whether she thinks we can solve the problem of sexism targeting woman gamers, she laughed, seemingly uncomfortable. "I wish there was a solution for negativity on the Internet," she said. "I don’t know how to solve it. And our virtual lives are as important as our real lives."

She added that the anonymity of forums contributes to the problem. "There are no repercussions for bad behavior, and a lot of kids are in environments where it’s cool [to be negative]," she said. "They don’t fear the consequences."

But, she added, anonymity can be beneficial, especially for marginalized groups. "I think it allows people to be more outspoken than they would be in real life, especially about politics," she said.

On intimacy online:

Day writes in her memoir about meeting a guy online, only to send physical snail-mail photos to each other. The anecdote seems like a relic of times past, but Day insists that intimacy found online can be as powerful as connections made in person -- especially if said connection is formed on an anonymous forum, rather than a more superficial outlet like Tinder.

"I think we have a lot of preconceived notions about what types are based on looks, and that’s really limiting. Especially coming from Hollywood -- I just think you should avoid unconscious bias. You can be surprised by who you’re attracted to.”

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Once upon a time, circa 1505 or 1506, the great High Renaissance painter Raphael painted a little known worked titled "Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn." As you can see, said painting does indeed feature one lady and one unicorn.

Except the title sort of downplays the whole mystical horned horse aspect. Raphael's unicorn, it should be noted hyperbolically in the headline, is a BABY unicorn that could easily be mistaken for a furry teacup puppy or a very amiable kitten. It's tiny mouth appears to be neighing, for crying out loud! Cue immense d'awwwwww.

This blessed portrait, originally housed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, caught our attention when a curious press release landed in our inboxes, announcing the painting's debut appearance in the United States later this year. The exhibition, very correctly titled "Sublime Beauty," will bring what is inarguably the world's most adorable baby unicorn first to the Cincinnati Art Museum and then to the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, Calif. We can hear the lines forming now.

But why does one lone painting of a lady and her pet unicorn deserve the attention of the Internet? According to Dr. Esther Bell, curator in charge of European paintings at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Raphael’s "Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn" is not only "a stunning masterpiece of the Italian High Renaissance," it's also a bona fide art world mystery.

The identity of the blond woman behind the unicorn, it turns out, is unknown, as is the meaning or iconography of the bite-size unicorn in her lap. Some scholars believe the painting may have been commissioned for a wedding; the unicorn could be interpreted as a symbol of chastity. For example, Alan Riding, in a 2001 article in The New York Times, speculated that ''Portrait of a Lady'' originally showed a betrothed woman holding a dog, "a symbol of fidelity." However, when the subject's marriage was called off, Raphael may have replaced the dog with a unicorn, a nod to her virginity.

Others note the portrait's resemblance to Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa," referencing minute details like the painting's half-length format, the presence of folded hands and the distant landscape in the background. Not to mention, that stare. Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino -- aka Raphael -- is known in part for his association with masters like Leonardo, Michelangelo and, thank you "TMNT," Donatello. Leo and the much younger Raphael were both creating works in Florence, Italy in the 16th century, so it wouldn't be much of a stretch if the latter was influenced by the former's style.

"The 'Mona Lisa' is the singular portrait of the High Renaissance, but we find ‘Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn’ to be just as beautiful and compelling,” Bell told the San Francisco Gate. “We believe Raphael was familiar with da Vinci’s work, and there is definitely a stylistic tie to be made to the 'Mona Lisa.'"

In the aforementioned press release, Bell teases that the "Sublime Beauty," which opens on Oct. 3, will introduce new scholarship on the miniature beast and his mysterious owner. The New York Times' recently reported that the woman in the painting, curator Linda Wolk-Simon believes, could be the daughter of Pope Alexander VI’s mistress, Giulia Farnese.

Until October, all we can do is feast upon the tiny creature's beauty here. While some museums are paying homage to contemporary cat memes, and others are celebrating the squee-inducing kitties of art history past, members of the Cincinnati and San Francisco art communities have this to say: don't forget about the baby unicorn.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Between 1981 and 1986, photographer John Crawford shot a series of 18 images from a helicopter positioned hundreds of feet above the ground.

No, he wasn't after awe-inspiring atmospheric landscapes. Not exactly. He was working on a project he calls "Aerial Nudes." It is precisely what it sounds like -- a collection of mesmerizing photographs that capture a single nude body, laid out amongst parked cars, grazing cows, stacked lumber and beached kayaks, from a bird's-eye view. 

"Basically my main motivation [for the series] was seeing the landscape from a bird's-eye perspective," Australia-based artist Crawford explained to The Huffington Post. He'd spend hours in helicopters flying from shoot to shoot while working, during which the vibrations and rotor noise would send him into a trance. "Looking vertically straight down from a helicopter, everything is a completely flat plane without the distraction of any horizon lines, where shapes and patterns become abstract forms."

During this time, he says, he began wondering what it would like if a naked body appeared next to the stretches of train tracks and fields he observed. "I could look directly down through the [helicopter's] clear Perspex floor," he added. "From this viewpoint -- and that state of mind -- all shapes and patterns in the landscape immediately become very linear, clean and strikingly abstract ... Sometimes all sense of scale was lost, and the thought came to me to plop a strategically placed nude in any of these graphic pieces of landscape and, bingo, there is the reference point for scale."

It wasn't long until this unusual kind of curiosity turned to action, thanks to his nude model of choice -- his wife, Carina -- and a willing pilot friend with a penchant for experimental maneuvers (he once serenaded Crawford at 7,000 feet, bellowing a high falsetto opera while demonstrating "perilous" helicopter moves).

Crawford shot the resulting series on color negative film, with all of the images constructed in-camera -- that is, with no Photoshop manipulation. "I didn’t know what a computer was," the photographer confessed. He'd plan the photos in advance, scouting locations across New Plymouth, Taranaki, on the West Coast of New Zealand’s North Island, from a fixed-wing plane. During his scouts, he'd take reference pictures, placing stick figures in the landscapes where Carina would eventually position herself.

"Some shots had an added bonus of the unexpected," he said, for example when "the cows appeared from nowhere, as if on cue" in one photo. The biggest satisfaction for Crawford was creating these seemingly impossible images. "Each image has its own funny story," he concluded. "People still ask me, 'How the fuck did you get that train to stop, Johnnie?' Easy answer ... Lay your wife naked on the railway lines and the train will stop!”

Today, Crawford lives in Auckland, New Zealand, and continues to work on various nude projects. His work predates many contemporary aerial nude projects from artists like Ruben Brulat and Renee Cox. For more on Crawford's work, check out his website.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Taylor Swift is taking the world by storm this summer with her sold out 1989 tour. But before she was consistently playing for football stadium-sized crowds, she had a reputation as a country-pop singer who wrote people's names into songs.

Whether it's in the title or lyrics, baby name ideas appear throughout her music, especially in the earlier albums. Here are 12 such names.

Drew 

"Drew looks at me. I fake a smile so he won't see, that I want and I'm needing everything that we should be." -- "Teardrops On My Guitar"

Bobby

"I met Bobby on the boardwalk, summer of '45." -- "Starlight" 

James

"You got that James Dean daydream look in your eye." -- "Style"

Cory

"Cory's eyes are like a jungle. He smiles, it's like the radio." -- "Stay Beautiful"

Stephen

"Hey Stephen, I know looks can be deceiving, but I know I saw a light in you." -- "Hey Stephen"

Abigail

"You sit in class next to a redhead named Abigail, and soon enough you're best friends." -- "Fifteen" 

Romeo

"Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone. I'll be waiting; all that's left to do is run." -- "Love Story"

Juliet

"That you were Romeo. You were throwing pebbles and my daddy said stay away from Juliet." -- "Love Story"

Mary

"Take me back to the time when we walked down the aisle. Our whole town came and our mamas cried." -- "Mary's Song (Oh My My My)"

Ronan

"Come on baby with me, we're gonna fly away from here. You were my best four years." -- "Ronan"

Tim

"When you think Tim McGraw, I hope you think my favorite song." -- "Tim McGraw"

John

"Dear John, I see it all now that you're gone." -- "Dear John"

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

If there's any question as to how to spruce up a dingy building in New York City -- without knocking it down and plopping a new one in its place -- street artists probably have the answer.

NYC's most recent brush with street-art wizardry involves the neighborhood of Tribeca, a 100-foot ballerina and the massive appeal of French artist JR. The man known for his expansive "Inside Out" project took to a residential and commercial property at 100 Franklin Street last week and pasted a towering image of a jumping dancer. The results are shown above.

JR's ballerina is nearly identical to a photograph being used to promote his film "Les Bosquets," which showed at Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year. The feature film centers around Les Bosquets, a housing project in the Parisian suburb of Montfermeil. The quasi-documentary also includes footage from a New York City Ballet performance of the same name, which JR choreographed with production help from Lil Buck, Hans Zimmer, Pharrell Williams, Woodkid and Ben Wallfisch.

According to artnet, the mammoth ballerina is set to remain on view indefinitely, thanks to a commission from developer DDG. Which is great, because there's nothing quite like the site of an overwhelmingly large and beautiful bit of public art. 

For more on JR's past works, check out our coverage here and here.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Whether she's dancing on stage or fronting a major campaign, ballerina Misty Copeland is always completely and utterly captivating. It's no surprise that the American Ballet Theatre star is wowing us once again by gracing the cover of Essence magazine's September issue. 

Copeland looks breathtaking in a billowing Zimmermann gown as she gracefully strikes a mind-blowing pose captured by photographer Dennis Leupold. 

“It was an easy decision for us to put Misty on the cover of our fashion issue. Not only is she gorgeous and a force to be reckoned with in the dance community, but she also realizes what this moment represents to so many," Vanessa De Luca, the editor-in-chief of Essence, told The Huffington Post. "Her story of defeating the odds despite the challenges in front of her is an inspiration to us all -- especially little girls who dream of becoming ballerinas when they grow up.”

The 32-year-old dancer made history just a few weeks ago by becoming the first black principal dancer at ABT in the company's 75 years of existence. And the awe-inspiring feat is certainly not lost on Copeland. 

"I'm going to continue to be who I am and my experiences as a black woman have made me who I am," Copeland told Essence. "All of a sudden now that I'm in this position, I'm not going to say, 'I'm just a dancer.' It's a huge deal because I'm a black woman. That's why it's a big deal."

When you're finished staring at Copeland's stunning cover, you can pick up Essence's September issue on newsstands August 14. Full disclosure: The story was written by yours truly.

 Also on HuffPost: 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

One father found a rad way to stand by his daughter. 

Alistair Campbell's 6-year-old daughter, Charlotte, is deaf and recently got a cochlear implant for her right ear, the New Zealand Herald reported. But right before the 6-year-old from Taupo, New Zealand, received the device -- her second -- Campbell decided to get one as well in a show of solidarity. His, however, came in the form of a tattoo on his head. 

(Story continues below.) 

On Monday, the dedicated dad posted photos of himself sporting his new tattoo on social media -- one of which included Charlotte alongside him with her implant for her left ear in plain view. The moving photo generated buzz across the Internet and was picked up by various media outlets.

It's not difficult to understand why. 

"I shared the photos with my friends and family to see, I never expected this huge response," Campbell told The Huffington Post. "I'm pleased I have helped to raise awareness for all cochlear implantees."

Charlotte received her first implant back when she was 4 years old. The tattoo, Campbell says, is all about honoring his beloved daughter through the challenges she's faced. 

"Charlotte's journey has been quite a hard journey for her and for us," the father told Stuff.co.nz. "The tattoo was a tribute -- this was all about her, not me."

The tattoo took about 45 minutes to complete, according to Buzzfeed News. As for the pain, Campbell said it was nothing he couldn't handle. He'll be letting his hair grow back, but is planning to shave it off, revealing the tattoo for special occasions or when his daughter requests to see it, the New Zealand Herald reported.

The dad told HuffPost that while his daughter doesn't quite understand the tattoo as of yet, she will come to appreciate its significance as she gets older. 

Campbell's support for his daughter doesn't stop there.

In December, he'll participate in a charity boxing event to raise money for Hear 4 Kidz Trust, a group that supports kids with hearing loss in Taupo. 

Also on HuffPost: 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

On the morning of March 18, 1990, a 23-year-old security guard named Richard Abath was keeping watch over Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Around 1 a.m. that day, he made ​​what looked like a serious yet innocent error, allowing two thieves posing as policemen to enter the premises and subsequently steal 13 artworks worth $500 million, including works by Vermeer, Degas and Rembrandt.

It was the largest museum heist in American history. 

When the real Boston police eventually showed up, they found Abath and a fellow guard bound and blindfolded in the museum's basement. After cooperating with the police investigations and agreeing to two lie detector tests, the young man was deemed blameless in his mistake. Now, at 49, he works as a teacher's aide in Brattleboro, Vermont. 

However, a recently released surveillance tape from March 17, 1990, the day before the heist, is raising some doubt regarding Abath's innocence. The grainy, six-minute tape captures Abath letting an unknown man into the museum, through the very entrance the thieves allegedly used the next day. 

In a statement released with the video, officials with the United States Attorney's office in Massachusetts did not identify Mr. Abath, nor did they outwardly suggest the video tape in some way implicates his involvement. However, in all of his interviews with police Abath never mentioned this March 17 visitor, and allowing him in was, according to the statement, "against museum policy."

"It's very troubling, "Anthony M. Amore, current director of security at the museum told The New York Times. "This video raises more questions than it answers."

The video was released 25 years after the heist in the hopes it could somehow help identify the unwarranted museum visitor. Authorities have apparently had the tape since the beginning of the investigation, though they may not have viewed it before 2013, when the case was assigned to a new prosecutor. 

It remains unclear whether Abath will be investigated again. The motivation behind the video's release is all the more unclear considering the FBI's belief that the two men long suspected of executing the heist are now dead.

Nonetheless, quite a lot of art remains on the loose. And for anyone who knows anything, the prize is tempting. The museum is offering a cool $5 million reward for any information that leads to the return of the works in good condition.

Two years ago, the FBI and art recovery experts were optimistic about the works' healthy return. "A quarter of a century is not that unusual for stolen paintings to be returned," Christopher Marinello, general counsel for The Art Loss Register, told the Associated Press. "Eventually they will resurface. Somebody will rat somebody else out. It's really only a matter of time."

"I was just this hippie guy who was not hurting anything, was not on anybody's radar," Abath, a Berklee College of Music dropout who often showed up stoned to shifts at the museum, said in an interview with NPR earlier this year. "And the next day, I was on everybody's radar for the largest art heist in history. "

If he's guilty, one thing is for sure; it will not be long before Jesse Eisenberg will be playing Abath in the Hollywood retelling in a theater near you. 

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

A slew of recent headlines suggest that William Shakespeare smoked marijuana, but an acclaimed Shakespeare scholar finds some of the evidence a little half-baked.

“Was William Shakespeare high when he penned his plays?” asks a Saturday headline from The Independent. In July, a team led by Francis Thackeray, an anthropology professor at South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand, found that four pipes unearthed from Shakespeare’s garden and dating from the 17th century contain traces of cannabis.

In the Independent article, Thackeray explores the possibility that Shakespeare smoked marijuana and references Shakespeare's Sonnet 76 —which mentions a “noted weed” and “compounds strange” —as possible proof that the Bard liked to toke up.

James Shapiro, a Columbia University professor who has published multiple books about Shakespeare’s life, isn’t so convinced that Shakespeare was a stoner.

“We don’t know what Shakespeare did or didn’t do,” Shapiro told The Huffington Post. “Just because these pipes were found in his garden doesn’t mean his neighbor kid didn’t throw the pipes over the fence. There are a million possible explanations.”

He’s especially skeptical of Thackeray using Sonnet 76 as supporting evidence, which Shapiro called a “really lame interpretation” of the poem.

“The line ‘keep invention in a noted weed’ is referring to weeds as dressing up, as clothes,” Shapiro said. “The poem is about dressing up language in a certain way and you really have to be insensitive to the poem to force the reading [to be about marijuana use].”

Shapiro added that there’s no evidence that people in Shakespeare's time even used the word “weed” to refer to marijuana.

Contact the author of this article at Hilary.Hanson@huffingtonpost.com.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

A Native American tribe's tumultuous conflict over genetic research is being brought to harrowing life on the Off-Broadway stage.

Deborah Zoe Laufer's “Informed Consent,” which is currently in previews at The Duke on 42nd Street in New York City and is being produced by Primary Stages and the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Project, dramatizes the real-life, semi-famous legal battle between the Havasupai, a Native American tribe based in the Grand Canyon, and Arizona State University.

 In 1990, members of that tribe agreed to donate blood as part of a university study they hoped would provide genetic clues as to the devastatingly high rate of diabetes among Havasupai people. They soon learned, however, that the blood samples were actually used by Arizona State researchers to study many other things, including schizophrenia and alcoholism as well as migration patterns which contradicted traditional stories. Many involved in the case felt that university scientists had taken advantage of a vulnerable, impoverished population, and once the case was brought to court, the $700,000 settlement set a legal precedent as to how informed research subjects should be regarding the use of their DNA.

Laufer’s play steers clear of complex legalese, however, focusing on the journey of a genetic anthropologist (played by Tina Benko), raising questions about race, cultural sensitivity and women's issues in the workplace along the way. Director Liesl Tommy says that she and the creative team went to great lengths to make the cast as racially diverse as possible, too. 

“I'm always looking for what I call 21st century stories. I’m always looking for things that feel right of this moment, or of the future,” Tommy told The Huffington Post. “Certainly there's never been a story that deals even remotely with Native American politics, at least on the New York stage.”

The show also provides a unique opportunity for actress DeLanna Studi, who is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and portrays a woman in the Havasupai tribe.

“Native women are either viewed as a princess, like some Pocahontas character, or we’re a victim,” she said. “For us, this is a huge step in the right direction for our women and how our women are portrayed onstage, because we’re usually relegated to the background. So it’s nice to have this opportunity to be a strong woman who owns the stage and is holding court.”

Given how the play incorporates race, religion and ethics, Laufer hopes “Informed Consent” will provoke questions rather than impart any specific message about those themes one way or the other.

“I don’t usually have messages in my plays; I don’t really have any answers,” she said. “But if people come out arguing when they leave the show, then I think I’ve done my job.”

"Informed Consent," presented by Primary Stages and the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science and Technology Project, is currently in previews at The Duke on 42nd Street in New York City. Head here for more details. 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Do you laugh in hahas, hehes, emojis or ROTFLFMAOs? Facebook thinks it has the answer, based on your age, gender and the place you live.

In a study published Thursday, Facebook said it had combed through posts and comments during the last week of May 2015 and found that 15 percent of people included laughter at least once in their posts and comments that week. It also analyzed the types of laughter used by people across demographics and noticed some big differences among the laughter-associated words people prefer. One of the big takeaways here: The lol is sooooooo over.

Each laughter word stem includes a wide range of laughter types, the study noted. Hahas, for example, include "the polite haha to a deranged hahahahahahaha." 

Here's a look at the study's findings:

Hahas are the most popular type of laughter, while lol is the least.

More than 50 percent of laughers use hahas, followed by emojis (33.7 percent), hehes (13.1 percent) and lols (1.9 percent). Moreover, 52 percent of people use strictly one laughter type, while about 20 percent use two different types.

 The way you laugh online depends on your city and region.

Laughers on the West Coast tend more toward hahas and hehes, while those on the East Coast tend to use emojis. Facebook created heat maps for the types of laughter by state. The darker the color is on the map below, the more the laughter word stem is used.

Laughter varies by city, too: "People in Chicago and New York prefer emojis, while Seattle and San Francisco prefer hahas," the study noted.

Young people prefer emojis in their laughter, while older people prefer to lol.

Women prefer emojis, while men prefer hahas. 

Whatever way you choose to communicate your laughter, keep doing it: A recent study published in the scientific journal Human Nature found that laughter makes people feel more comfortable and more likely to open up in conversation. 

H/T Fortune

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

You've probably heard that there's a tad too much sugar in juices, soft drinks and even coconut water. But do you know what they look like once the water is boiled away and only the sugar is left?

That's what New Zealand-based photographer Henry Hargreaves set out to discover when he dehydrated sugary drinks like Coke, Snapple, and Mountain Dew and poured the remaining substance in a lollipop mold. The result? Gigantic lollipops. 

"I  wanted to illustrate visually a way to see what was in our drinks," Hargreaves told The Huffington Post. "I had seen the piles of sugar, but to me that doesn't mean much as it's not actually coming from the physical drink. Hence, I wanted to create a lollipop from the drink."  

For reference purposes, here's what a bottle of Snapple looks like in lollipop form next to its lollipop-sized cap.

 And here's what a coke lollipop looks like next to a regular-sized lollipop:

And here are more sugary drinks in lollipop form:

Intrigued? Hargreaves promises he has more sugar-related projects in the works. "I have another couple up my sleeve, stay tuned!" 

 H/T Marie Claire 

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

This is how it's done. 

Mayli and Brooklyn -- two best buddies, both with spina bifida -- give us a new take on the viral whip and nae nae, with a sweet dance routine in their wheelchairs. And with hair flips, spins, and even a stanky leg -- they turn it out!

The pint-sized divas were born just six months apart with the same diagnosis, ABC News reported, and have become best pals who love to groove.

“We have frequent sleepovers and kitchen dance parties,” Mayli’s mother, Sami Gibson, told the news outlet. “God knew these two were meant to be friends.”

(Story continues below.)

Because her daughter loves to boogie, Gibson started a dance class for children in wheelchairs called Ayita, which is a Cherokee name meaning “first to dance,” Gibson explains in a GoFundMe campaign for the class.

“Mayli is a dancer, if there is a beat she's moving to it,” she writes. “While some people may think she's 'confined' to her chair, her chair is actually her means of freedom and independence. [With the class], we want to give these kids a space where they won't feel so 'different' or stared at, or questioned.”

Both Mayli and Brooklyn attend Ayita, but clearly they keep movin’ and groovin’ outside the class. Their “Whip/NaeNae” video has hit more than 600,000 views on Facebook as of Monday.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

In 2013, shortly after the Oxford Dictionary declared "selfie" the word of the year, The Atlantic published a defense of selfies as "a deliberate, aesthetic expression."

If selfies are indeed an art form, Damjan Pita is now taking that a step further. Pita, who works as a digital creative director in New York, is one of the developers of Sellfie, a website that literally sells people's Instagram selfies to random strangers. The site, which is a bit creepy, seems to be operating in a legal gray area -- it might even be violating Instagram's terms of use. 

Sellfie, which launched in July, lets you scroll through a random stream of public Instagram pictures that have been tagged #selfie:

Once you find a selfie you fancy, you can go ahead and order a print (for a whopping $150), which will be delivered to your home within a couple weeks from a printer in Portland, Oregon. After a selfie has been purchased, it won't show up in the stream again, which means no one else will be able to buy that same pic. 

While the Sellfie website doesn't show the name of or link to the Instagram accounts that post these selfies, it doesn't blur people's faces in the photos.

Here's another problem with the site: Its photo stream appears to be uncensored. As we were scrolling through the stream to capture the GIF above, we saw multiple nude pictures (mostly women), as well as one racy image of what appeared to be a very young person, possibly a minor. Such photos aren't permitted on Instagram, per the app's community guidelines, but policing this rule is a constant challenge. 

We reached out to an Instagram representative about this matter, and he responded thus: "We don’t allow nudity on Instagram, and we will remove content from the platform that violates our policies."

Pita said that he's aware of the issue with nude pictures. "Instagram takes its time to censor pics. Because of that, from time to time nude pictures appear," he explained. However, he said that if somebody were to order a print of a picture containing sensitive content -- such as an underage person without clothes on, or a photo containing racist subject matter -- he would cancel the order and issue a refund. "We won't support that kind of behavior," Pita said. 

But Sellfie also raises questions about copyright and fair use in the digital age. 

The website draws inspiration from the work of Richard Prince, a visual artist whose controversial 2014 show "New Portraits" repurposed pics from Instagram accounts of celebrities and teenagers. Prince printed the images on canvas and sold them for $90,000 apiece. 

Here's one of the shots he used in his show:

The Sellfie project also exists within this gray area that some call "appropriation art.” In a nutshell, appropriation of copyrighted material isn’t copyright infringement only insofar as it amounts to fair use. In recent cases, some courts have found forms of appropriation art to be fair use, concluding that the art transforms the protected work sufficiently. In the instance of Prince's "New Portraits" show, the artist left an Instagram comment on each of the pics he printed out from other people's accounts, and he made sure his comment was visible in the prints that he sold -- though many didn't think he transformed the works enough to rightly call them his. 

"If you take a protected work and you give it sufficiently new meaning, new purpose, or new content, that's generally treated as transformative, and will likely qualify as fair use," explained Shyam Balganesh, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who specializes in copyright law and innovation policy.

"There is today a debate in the copyright law community on just how much modification of the protected work there needs to be to qualify for fair use. It doesn't have to be an enormous modification; but there's also a recognition that there needs to be more than something inconsequential, like a few words or a couple of brush strokes," Balganesh said.

According to Balganesh, the prints being sold on Sellfie seem insufficiently transformative and therefore unlikely to qualify as fair use.

A rep for Instagram didn't respond directly to our questions about whether Sellfie's business practices constitute fair use, but he did point us to sections of Instagram's API Terms of Use which limit the ways in which developers can use the Instagram platform for financial gain and state that developers must comply with photographers' requirements before using their photos. The rep added that "you can draw your own conclusions about whether this violates our policies." 

When we asked Pita about this, he said he stands by the goal of his project. "We definitely think we are walking in a grey area. And we think that even the Richard Prince pieces are in a grey area," he said. However, he added that, "based on our printing process -- using a printer that usually does prints for museums and galleries -- we are adding value to the pictures and transforming these from a digital state into a concrete state."

Legal questions aside, the Sellfie website -- which is one of several projects created by Pita through DoSomethingGood, a union between an incubator and an art collective --  aims to reveals the power of selfies as an artistic form of self-expression in the digital age. "A selfie is like the mirror of our time," Pita said.

It's no surprise, then, that Pita was also inspired by the undisputed queen of selfies, Kim Kardashian West. Pita said he and a friend purchased Selfish, Kardashian's book of selfies, just a couple nights before starting the website -- and it made quite an impression.

"The book is super cool, even if you are not a Kim Kardashian fan, like us," Pita said. "So the next two nights after work we put the website together."

This post has been updated with additional comments from Instagram. 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

This is an excerpt from Essence magazine's September 2015 cover story "Stepping Up" about American Ballet Theatre ballerina Misty Copeland. The article was written by Julee Wilson, senior fashion editor at The Huffington Post. 

“…One of Copeland’s most endearing qualities, beyond dancing on her toes and making it look easy, is the fact that she’s so unapologetically Black. ‘It’s easy for someone who isn’t Black or other or who has never experienced racism to dismiss what I’m saying…it’s easier for them to say, ‘Why do you focus so much on that? You’re a beautiful dancer.’ But the reason I’m here and I have this voice is because I’m Black.’ Copeland tells me that she has never tried to pretend that ballet doesn’t have a race problem. She recounts times fellow dancers told her that some American Ballet Theatre (ABT) staff members were overheard saying, ‘Misty stands out too much because of her skin color.’ With that said, Copeland’s singular mission is changing the landscape of ballet by promoting Project Plié, an initiative launched in September 2013 by ABT with Copeland on the advisory board to increase racial and ethnic representation at ballet companies around the country. Copeland also mentors several dancers on the rise. At the moment she has more than a dozen mentees (including identical twin brothers Naazir and Shaakir Muhammad, who are currently standout students at the School of ABT). ‘I’m going to continue to be who I am and my experiences as a Black woman have made me who I am. All of a sudden now that I’m in this position, I’m not going to say, ‘I’m just a dancer.’ It’s a huge deal because I’m a Black woman. That’s why it’s a big deal…” 

Read more at Essence.com or pick up the September issue on newsstands August 14.  

 Also on HuffPost: 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

If this video is anything to go by, New Yorkers need a serious refresher course on women in history. 

In the video created by MAKERS, a host asks people on the street who made a certain historical discovery, letting them choose between the woman who actually did it and a fictional man. Unsurprisingly, most respondents assumed that the men were the creators. 

"Hmm," one participant says when asked who invented the fire escape, inventor Anna Connelly or '90s heartthrob Jonathan Taylor Thomas. "I'm feeling like [whoever invented] the first fire escape could be a woman, but is probably a man." Spoiler alert: She's wrong.

 This lighthearted video reminds us that women's contributions to history just aren't as well known -- something that seriously needs to change. Because #HerStoryIsHistory, too. 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

It was 2014, and photographer George Steinmetz flew over Met Life Stadium in a helicopter to shoot pictures of the Super Bowl from the sky.

But when he got there, he and his pilot soon discovered it was bundled in black insulation to keep it from freezing. "It was blown up like a bubble; there wasn’t anything to see," he told The Huffington Post. "I said to myself, 'I’m in the air, I better keep looking around.'"

The photographer, who has taken pictures from the air above 50 countries for publications such as National Geographic, the New York Times Magazine and Time, realized he'd never seen New York City's parks, cemeteries, rail yards, condos and boroughs from the air in winter.

"It was spectacular," he said. "I went up three or four more times that winter. I was hooked."

From a helicopter, Steinmetz saw the city from a unique perspective and spent the rest of 2014 taking what he calls "an aerial portrait of New York City" for his forthcoming book, "New York Air: The View From Above," out through Abrams Books on October 13 this year.

"While I was in the middle of [the project]," he said, "I wanted to make the definitive piece on New York, and realized it was impossible because the city changed so fast. I realized I had to do it in one year, all four seasons. That was about as complete as I could get. Now I've finished the book on New Years Eave last year and already there’s a whole mess of new buildings."

Throughout 30 to 40 flights, Steinmetz said he watched from the sky as the seasons' colors changed from winter's black and whites to the technicolor of spring and autumn. He noticed how New Yorkers seemed to crawl out from hibernation and run for the parks and pools in the summer.

Steinmetz told HuffPost the city was inspiring to watch for a year, because while other U.S. cities are beautiful, "You don't have the kind of diversity you have in New York City, seasonally and architecturally, and in the history and geography there." He added, I started thinking that after I finished New York, what do I do next? I was kind of stumped. It’s difficult to find something as diverse, and I’ll probably have to go to another country [to find it.]"

If you can't wait for the book to come out, Steinmetz posts previews on Instagram, along with historical facts and trivia of each location, written by him and Abrams' Editor-in-Chief, Eric Himmel.

"The cladding for the top of the Chrysler Building was fabricated in sheet-metal shops on the 65th and 67th floors. The iconic seventy-seven story Chrysler Building was the world’s tallest for only eleven months, until the Empire State Building surpassed it in 1931, but no skyscraper has ever surpassed its design." -- George Steinmetz on Instagram.

"The Bayonne Golf Club is built on the lumpy ground of 7.5 million cubic yards of sludge dredged from New York Harbor. The views of Lower Manhattan from here are stunning, and for those who don’t like driving, the pro shop offers helicopter and boat services." -- George Steinmetz on Instagram.

"The last rays of sunlight reflect off the top of One World Trade, with the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges in the background." -- George Steinmetz on Instagram.

"There are many hidden worlds in Manhattan, like this rooftop pool on 40th Street & 2nd Avenue on an early summer evening." -- George Steinmetz on Instagram.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Back in the Civil War era, known to some as the "golden age of penmanship," good handwriting was your ticket to success. Nowadays, most of us have traded in our pens and quills for laptops and iPads.

Jake Weidmann, however, isn't one to follow the pack. While his classmates in school clickity-clacked on their keyboards, he was hard at work, mastering his pen's every. Last. Stroke.

"One of the longest, oldest romances is between the eye and the hand," Weidmann explains in a video profile by Uproxx. He goes on to elaborate on the story of his lifelong love affair and intense devotion to what many consider a dying artform. 

Weidmann was recently inducted into the Master Penman Society, an exclusive club for those who have showed exceptional skills in Business penmanship, Ornamental and Spencerian script, Engrosser's script, Engrossing and Illumination, Offhand Flourishing and Text lettering. You know, normal stuff.

As of now, there are only 12 living master penmen in existence. Weidmann is the youngest member by 30 years.

Weidmann is also a fine artist who incorporates his calligraphy skills into wildly ornate drawings that seem to float off the page. The distinction between language and image starts to blur as the penman transforms every letter into a mesmerizing combination of shadow and line.

As if it wasn't obvious enough, the Master Penman Society is very serious about handwriting. There is something bleak about the prospective of future generations growing up without ever dotting their i's and crossing their t's. In the words of Michael Sull, director of the International Association of Master Penmen, Engrossers and Teachers of Handwriting (IAMPETH): "If you don't teach your child handwriting, the thoughts that they develop when they wish to communicate through a computer will vanish as soon as they touch the keyboard."

 Watch Weidmann work his magic for yourself:

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Think of Los Angeles tourist hotspot Venice Beach and certain sun-splashed images flock to mind: jacked-up body builders, bikini-clad roller bladers, drum circles, hula hoops, belly button rings and henna tattoos. HAZMAT suits, though? Not so much... yet.

Washington-based photographer Michael Dyrland imagines a not-so-distant dystopian future -- about 20 years from now, to be exact -- in which the toxicity of Los Angeles' beaches become so unbearable surfers must don full protective gear to catch a wave. 

The series was inspired by a recent vacation, when Dyrland's dreams of surfing were squashed by high levels of pollutants in the water. "I went down in Los Angeles in October of 2014 to take some engagement photos for a friend," he explained to The Huffington Post. "I was really looking forward to this trip because I wanted to try my hand at surfing."

One night it rained, hard, but being from Washington, Dyrland didn't bat an eye. "When I woke up the following morning I asked my friends when we could go out and surf. They said, 'Are you crazy? No one goes in the water after it rains, you could get MRSA, Hep C, respiratory infection ...'  I was shocked."

Because Los Angeles gets so little rain, when it happens, all of the city's sewage and garbage runs down the street and into the ocean. "During a typical rain storm as much as 10 billion gallons of rain runoff goes into the ocean," Dyrland said.

"After the photo shoot was over, I kept thinking about not being able to go surfing. Not being able to go into the water for three days was crazy and as a photographer I wanted to try and bring awareness to this issue in a creative and visual photo series."

Thus "HAZMAT Surfing" was born. 

Photos by: Michael Dyrland & Mike Marshall

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

When your nemesis is named Mamie Claire and stole your idea for a T-shirt line, only a psychic can chart your destiny.

That's precisely where Brooke (Greta Gerwig) and her soon-to-be stepsister, Tracy (Lola Kirke), venture in Noah Baumbach's latest, "Mistress America." There, they are informed Brooke must travel to Greenwich, Connecticut, to guilt-trip her ex-fiance, now married to Mamie Claire, into funding her New York City restaurant enterprise. Will the duo take the bait? Find out in this exclusive clip. The screwball comedy, written by Baumbach and Gerwig in their first collaboration since "Frances Ha," opens in limited release on Aug. 14.

 Also on HuffPost: 

For a constant stream of entertainment news and discussion, follow HuffPost Entertainment on Viber.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.