It wasn't a fluke when social media powerhouse Nicholas Megalis became responsible for the most viewed Vine in history, he's a legit creative talent. I dare you to watch it once and stop it. Impossible.

Check out his conversation with HuffPost's Chaz Smith as they try to keep focused hanging out in some massage chairs.

Take a trip to all of Nicholas' Internet homes:

Vine: Nicholas Megalis

Twitter: @nicholasmegalis

YouTube: Nicholas Megalis

Instagram: nicholasmegalis

Tumblr: Nicholas Megalis

Music produced by Above Avrage Productions. HuffPost 6x60 is hosted by Chaz Smith, a 20-year-old from New Jersey majoring in Cinema Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. You can follow him on Vine, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat (simplyputchaz) and YouTube. 

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Yoro, a New York-based artist also known as Hula, was thrust into the spotlight this summer after his hyperrealistic portraits of women over grim waterways went viral.

Yoro paints while floating on a stand-up paddleboard, using anchors and rope to steady himself. But his newest canvas added another challenge to the process. Yoro chose a melting iceberg, broken off from a nearby glacier, "to ignite a sense of urgency," he explained on his website. 

Iceland's rapidly melting icebergs lose an average of 11 billion tons of ice every year, causing much of the island's land to "rebound" or move upward at an accelerated rate, according to a January study by the University of Arizona.

Yoro says his portrait represents "the millions of people in need of our help who are already being affected from the rising sea levels" brought on by climate change. He calls this mural "Aʻo ʻAna," which, according to Yoro, means "The Warning" in Hawaiian.

Yoro spent a little more than a week scouting locations, hiking for miles and finding creative ways to get his paint on the icy canvas floating in the sea.

"Once I had the final idea and concept in place, I felt I had to find a way to bring this piece to life," Yoro told The Huffington Post. "I knew the piece would not be as powerful if it weren't for the specific locations and placement."

To prepare, Yoro used a power drill to mount thin acrylic sheets (similar to plexiglass) onto the ice. Once they were fastened, he painted directly on the sheets from his board, completing his eight-foot long portrait in late October. He estimates that the ice will have melted away or broken up in just a few weeks, at which point the acrylic sheets will be retrieved.

"Just in the short week I was there," he explained to CNN, "the icebergs all around me were constantly cracking and flipping."

Yoro told HuffPost that, oftentimes, "humans don't respond unless we actually see the danger." His childhood in Hawaii, he says, taught him to respect the land. "I felt the need to use my work in order to inspire positive change in society," he explained. 

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It’s probably happened to you. You’re at a bar with a few friends, and they’re playing all the hits. Not those sugary Top-40 anthems you poke fun at when they pop into your head unannounced (“‘I can’t feel my face’? Have we depleted our body metaphor resources so entirely?”). The real hits. The newest songs by the truest artists of our era, according to Pitchfork.

The soft-spoken acoustic guy with a touching story. The ambient DJ, with the hair. The accessible hip-hop artist. The woman. Whoever’s in charge of the music at this bar really knows their stuff. They’re even busting out a few surprising and tasteful covers of pop songs! Who knew how thoughtful a song like “Shake It Off” could become in the right context? Who knew how heart-rending?

You’re considering this when your friend Dave asks one of those questions people ask so they can share their own answer.

“Favorite cover song,” Dave says. “Go.”

This leads to a mostly delightful conversation about the good (Cat Power’s “Satisfaction”) the weird (Britney Spears’s “Satisfaction”) and the divisive (The Flaming Lips’ “What a Wonderful World”). The merits of a successful cover -- when discussed at bars and dinner parties and in most music journalist’s musings about cover songs that I’ve read -- usually center on its ability to give a song new meaning or context, or at least generate a dialogue between the creator and the coverer. The consensus is usually that anything less isn’t much better than stealing.

In a recent piece on why cover songs are sometimes as popular as the original pieces they imitate, Maura Johnson notes that some bands have found success on Spotify by recording imitations of artists who’ve opted out of the app. She ridicules this copycat approach, writing, “It's the musical equivalent of search-engine optimization manipulation [...] Perhaps because of that, and despite the name being adulatory, ‘tribute’ versions of pop songs are looked at as more nefarious than your everyday covers.”

A cover that falls squarely outside of the tribute realm: the Screaming Females’ take on “Shake It Off,” a forceful anthem that adds an unabashedly powerful tone to Swift’s bouncy heartbreak recovery instructions. While Taylor Swift suggests shaking off the pain of a specific breakup, Marissa Paternoster treats the lyrics as a steadfast personal creed. She doesn’t strip the original song of its meaning, or imply that the original singer’s intention is vapid. She doesn’t just add something to the song; she adds without taking away.

Compare this with Ryan Adam’s version of the same song, and the problem with how we talk about covers is thrown into high relief. Like the Screaming Females take, Adams' version of "Shake It Off," which he recorded for a full-length cover album of Swift's "1989," is not a tribute. He doesn't mimic the original song's rah-rah chorus or the fun yet strong tone of Swift's verses. He repurposes the words to fit a new style, but, unlike the Screaming Females, his cover doesn't retain the mood or intentions behind the song. 

Adams broods between ethereal, Bon Iver-like echoes, suggesting tragic undertones behind the peppy words. It doesn't make much sense, neither as an embracing or a subverting of the song's original themes. At first (and second, and third) listen, it sounds more like the melancholic sheen of successful, "serious" dude rock being dusted over an already smart and meaningful song. 

His discussion of the cover album on social media suggests more of the same: as a well-reviewed artist embraced by more discerning (read: millennial male) listeners, his opinion on which pop songs matter, matters. And his choice to cover a woman’s energetic, bubbly ballad functions as a smug stamp of approval.

"Hey @taylorswift13," he tweeted with a link to "Out of the Woods," "What a song. Wow." Of “Bad Blood,” he tweeted, “Unreal song, Taylor. Wow.”

Suddenly, Swift’s catchy pop songs are more than catchy pop songs. They are complex! They are unreal! Thankfully, the winner of seven Grammys and a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame has Ryan Adams to tell her that. 

A fan of Adams’ music, Swift tweeted her enthusiasm about the album, and other musicians and reviewers responded similarly. Gothamist called the works “beautiful,” and Details wrote that they were “REALLY good,” noting, “These two have more in common than you might think.”

Although Swift sounded her support for this particular project, the implication of the broader trend, and how it's received by critics, is clear and irksome: without Adams’ assistance, Swift’s songs are nothing more than simple pop hits. But with her words sung in his critic-vetted voice, a great album is born. It’d be an innocuous enough effort if it occurred in isolation, but, unfortunately, this specific breed of appropriation is common, and female pop sensations aren’t the only ones whose voices get the thumbs up once filtered through the tenor of an indie rock dude. More often, these icky covers involve a male musician repurposing the words of an R&B or rap artist, calling attention to the supposed humor behind the often anger-fueled lyrics.

Acoustic and rock covers of rap songs have been around approximately five minutes less than rap songs have, which is unfortunate for anyone who’s searched for a single on Spotify, and endured the 30-second layover between the conclusion of their chosen song and the start of their next selection. Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” recedes quickly behind Phish’s rendition, made popular by Napster in the late '90s. For an incomplete but nevertheless informative compilation of other, similar efforts, VICE has rounded up a collection of white people covering rap songs on acoustic guitars.

The phenomenon isn’t restricted to the goofy, amateur efforts of YouTube stars. In 2000, Dynamite Hack’s rendition of Eazy-E’s “Boyz-n-the-Hood” became the first rap cover to stake out space on the Billboard charts. In 2005, Ben Folds’ cover of Dr. Dre’s “Bitches Ain’t Shit” snuck onto Billboard’s Hot 100 at number 71. The song is still a regular fixture in Folds’ encore routine, in spite of his announcement in 2008 that he wouldn’t perform it again.

The nasally, glasses-clad singer is known for running the emotional gamut with his songs, which range from tragic to comic, with little middle ground covered. The nuance experienced at one of his shows comes not from the complexity of the individual songs, but from the quick, jerky gear shifts between manic laughter and deep solemnity. His “Bitches Ain’t Shit” cover fits neatly within his humor canon, as an interview he gave with Nerve acknowledges. “The former frontman of Ben Folds Five isn’t afraid to release a fake album, brandish a synthesizer, or cover Dr. Dre’s ‘Bitches Ain’t Shit’ while rocking Buddy Holly-esque black glasses,” the profile reads.

But what, exactly, is so funny about adding maudlin vocals to a rap song about, among other things, the deterioration of a relationship while one partner is serving jail time? By singing Dr. Dre’s exact lyrics in a comically dramatic tone reserved for his less sincere works, Folds is encouraging listeners to hear the words as ridiculous, as “other.” “Your problems are hilarious,” he asserts, if only by continuing to perform the song in spite of it being met, continually, with laughter.

Even if Fold’s intention is to add an air of tragedy to the dramatic scenes in the song, stripping the original of its flat affect is ridding it of something vital. When violent lines are piled together almost offhandedly, an artistic statement is made about shocking scenes becoming normalized. It might not be a feeling that resonates with everyone -- but that’s okay. It doesn’t need to. So while Fold’s cover adds something of questionable value to Dr. Dre’s song, it also takes something away: the gritty voice needed to make the words feel real for those who’ve lived them.

Fold’s “Bitches Ain’t” Shit” and Adam’s “Shake It Off” are evidence that when a cover song “adds something,” be it the personality of the coverer or a different, perceived context, it often also takes something away.

Which is why the oft-criticized tribute -- the cover song that takes no liberties with tweaking the tone of an original -- can be a valuable means of disseminating the music of undervalued or marginalized groups. If Adams could’ve somehow kept Swift’s songs feminine, his covers would prop her up rather than undercut her own artistic choices, which are so often dismissed as bubbly and unserious. If Folds had left Dr. Dre’s flat tone untouched, he’d have kept something essential about the original song in tact.

The most recent cover to circulate on music blogs does just that. In the middle of a stop on his deeply personal “Carrie and Lowell” tour, Sufjan Stevens broke out into a song most of the younger members of the crowd already knew the words to: Drake’s meme-inspiring “Hotline Bling." Stevens didn’t recast the lyrics in the sweetly melancholic crooning that makes up much of his tragic album; he stayed relatively faithful to Drake’s uptempo hit, and bounced around stage, providing momentary relief from his otherwise heavy set. The result isn't quite as powerful as the few faithful covers performed by female R&B artists, but it's decidedly less cringeworthy than Folds' or Adams' croon-heavy updates. 

Critics might’ve read a little too much into this choice, crediting Stevens with a performance that transforms the song into something that really connects people. Of course, Drake’s version accomplishes that already, as popular songs tend to do. Still, Stevens has mentioned his reverence for Drake in the past, and his straightforward tribute to the song is a gentle reminder to the elitists more likely to hide out in his audiences that popular songs, in popular packaging, have a special power, too.

There’s another artist of the indie ilk -- albeit one who’s gotten more flack than Stevens, due to cutesy lyrics and a close association to “The O.C.” -- who pays simple homage to pop songs.

Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard might have a shaky reputation among the Pitchfork set, but his approval rating is likely higher than, say, Avril Lavigne, the Canadian punk artist who, in spite of being smacked with a “poser” label, succeeded in producing a few hit singles. The first, as anyone alive in 2002 probably knows, was “Complicated,” a sweetly sung rant about the value of sincerity. Gibbard covered the song during a live performance uploaded to YouTube in 2008, and his approach is something other artists should aspire to, in terms of tributes.

After a few seconds of strumming, he starts singing Avril’s words, matching her wounded tone. The crowd laughs and hoots with sarcastic enjoyment, assuming Gibbard’s performance was an attempt to “recontextualize” by mocking. He interrupts them, and adds before continuing: “No, it’s a serious song.” The chuckling continues, but slowly, something shifts, and condescension recedes behind something else: connection. By the end of the song, everyone’s clapping along, unguarded.

Gibbard might not’ve added some new layer of meaning to the song, but he delivered an artist’s words in a way that allowed a roomful of people to reconsider her value. In his case, and the case of others covering works by musicians who aren’t taken as seriously as those producing glorified dad rock, a tribute was a wise and beautiful choice.

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Thirty years ago, a spiky-haired little boy set a trap with a tuna fish sandwich, and one of the most iconic friendships in comic strip history was born. 

The first strip of "Calvin And Hobbes" ran on Nov. 18, 1985, introducing the world to the mischievous young Calvin (named for the 16th-century theologian) and his pet tiger Hobbes (named for the 17th-century philosopher).  

Once called called "America's most profound comic strip," the beloved comic ran for just a decade before creator Bill Watterson retired it on Dec. 31, 1995.

Watterson, who famously resisted merchandising his creations (unlike "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz) told The Washington Post in March that "A comic strip, like anything else, has a natural life span."

Lee Salem, the comic's editor, assessed the enduring legacy of the boy and his tiger 30 years on.

"I don’t doubt that thirty years from now some young reader will stumble upon 'Calvin and Hobbes' and re-discover how good comic strips can be," Salem said in an interview posted on the comic strip's official website. "To my mind, that is Bill’s great legacy, a challenge to readers to keep looking for the most talented and creative cartoonists and a challenge to cartoonists to keep trying to reach that goal." 

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This article originally appeared on artnet News.

French president François Hollande announced plans to grant “asylum" to art and archeological treasures at risk of being destroyed by ISIS in an address at a UNESCO conference in Paris on Tuesday.

Hollande's announcement follows the ISIS perpetrated terror attacks in Paris on Friday which claimed 129 lives.

“The right to asylum applies to people […] but asylum also applies to works, world heritage," he said, adding that ISIS is working “at this very moment" on looting and then selling cultural artifacts on the black market. 

Illicit antiquities are “transiting through free ports which are havens for receiving stolen goods and laundering, including in Europe," he said.

The French president went on to pledge the implementation of a legal framework to facilitate the safekeeping of threatened cultural heritage, which he said the French parliament would consider in the near future. He added the country would also adopt the UN Security Council resolutions banning the import, transit, and trade of illicit antiquities.

In the meantime, he announced that France will tighten up customs checks on its borders to identify smuggled illicit antiquities, AFP reported.

The move comes after the Association of Art Museum Directors—comprised of 242 members across the United States, Canada, and Mexico—published a list of protocols in October offering threatened museums around the world temporary safekeeping for their holdings.

The radical islamists also decapitated the 82-year-old Syrian antiquities expert Khaled al-Assad for refusing to reveal the location of valuable artifacts he had hidden, and executed three people by detonating explosives on ancient columnsto which they had been tied.

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Say hello to the dark side of the Internet, Adele: Premature album leaks!

The Grammy-winning songstress's new album "25" isn't scheduled for release until Friday, but on Tuesday, London-based Juno Records accidentally posted 2-minute snippets of each of the 11 songs on the album to its website. The e-commerce site quickly took the songs down, but not before a few impatient Adele fans managed to listen. Weirdly (or, perhaps not so weirdly), the Juno Records page for the album is now blank. 

ITV News in the UK also wrote that someone posted a link to a digital copy of the album to Twitter on Tuesday night, but that it, too, was taken down within minutes. 

In addition, social media reports on Tuesday indicated that some Target stores had started selling the album early, with one user even posting a photo of herself holding what appears to be a copy of the CD. 

However, Adele's label XL Records issued a statement denying the Target reports. It's not yet clear how that squares with the photo above. 

Word to the wise: Even if you've already listened to "Hello" so many times that its lyrics are burnt into your eardrums, you have options besides resorting to shady Internet leaks! You could listen to the two other singles from "25" that Adele has released through official channels, "Water Under the Bridge" and "When We Were Young." You could listen to some of the many covers of "Hello" that have sprung up over the Web. Or you could just, you know, wait: The album will be out in a matter of days.

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Hunger makes you a modern girl. Being in the legendary band Sleater-Kinney, the co-creator of the hilarious "Portlandia" and a character on "Transparent" makes you our No. 1 candidate for imaginary best friend.

In case you weren't sure, we're talking to Carrie Brownstein, aforementioned badass and author of the recently released memoir, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl. The memoir covers the scope of Brownstein's childhood, her experience in Sleater-Kinney and her role in the Riot Grrrl movement. Lest you think this tome might be another average celebrity-penned book, rest assured Brownstein can do memoir just as well as she can put a bird on it. "In the vast library of recent rock memoirs," writes John Williams in The New York Times, "... [hers] may be the one that most nakedly exposes its author’s personality." 

If reading Brownstein isn't enough, Penguin Random House has a peek into what it's like to hear Brownstein. Her audiobook recording outtakes, shown below, are just as fun and frenetic as any "Portlandia" sketch -- and will make you want to put this way up there on your to-be-read list.  

H/T Bustle

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ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — A Denver-area store called Isis Books & Gifts wants the world to know its name comes from the Egyptian goddess of healing and motherhood and it isn't run by terrorists.

Co-owner Jeff Harrison said Wednesday that the suburban Denver shop has been vandalized five times in the past year or so, probably by people who mistake the name for ISIS, one of the acronyms for the Islamic State terrorist group.

The latest vandalism came last weekend when a store sign was smashed after the terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 129 people.

The store sells books and gifts related to spirituality, religion and healing.

"Isis is the name of an Egyptian goddess, 3,500 years old at least, the goddess of women and healing and childbirth — basically the antithesis of everything the terrorists are about," he said.

Harrison suspects the vandals are "some ignorant people believing that somehow the terrorists have a store, a gift store, in the middle of Denver, Colorado."

The store has been around since 1980 under the Isis name. He and his wife, Karen, have owned it since 1997.

Harrison said he's heard from other businesses with "Isis" in their names, asking if they planned to change. He tells them no.

"For now, we are definitely sticking with the name," he said.

The store has not suffered from the name confusion.

"Business has been fine. Actually on the uptick," Harrison said.

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"If you think it's cool or edgy to hate selfies, it's not cool, it just means you're uneasy about the fact that girls believe they are beautiful."

This is how two young women begin their "Ode to the Selfie." In under two minutes, poets Megan Falley and Olivia Gatwood manage to explain why taking selfies can be an exquisitely empowering act. 

Together, the feminists beautifully describe the features a woman might want to share with the world in the form of a selfie.

"Today your hair was a river down your back," Gatwood says. "Today your freckles were sprinkles on ice cream," Falley adds after.

They compare a selfie to an artistic masterpiece. "Today your iPhone was the Louvre and you were the Mona Lisa," they say together. 

But what does the act of taking a selfie really mean for the thousands of young women who snap them? Falley and Gatwood go back and forth and sum up why selfies matter in four perfect sentences.

"Today you are in control of your own incredible body. Today millions of girls loved themselves in the face of a world that tells them not to," they say. "And isn't that tiny revolution enough? And isn't that the greatest revolution of all?"

So keep on snapping those selfies, ladies. Bring on the revolution, one self-portrait at a time.

To learn more about Falley and Gatwood's "Speak Like A Girl" poetry show, head over to their site.

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We tattoo ourselves because we are moved by love, wish to show our beliefs or want to honor something we've lost. And after Friday's terrorist attacks on Paris, many people are showing off homages to the city on their bodies.

Daphne Burki, the presenter of French TV show "La Nouvelle Edition," displayed her tattoos on air Monday. After that, many people showcased their Paris-related designs on social media. Some bore the city's motto -- "Fluctuat nec mergitur," a Latin phrase that means "She is tossed by the waves but does not sink" -- while others had Paris-themed designs, such as Jean Julien's "Peace for Paris."

People around the world shared their tattoos, like this woman in the Philippines:

And this person in Ohio:

Some tattoo artists prepared flash tattoos with designs related to the attacks, like these by Florence Levanti in Paris:

Others took a more DIY approach:

"Done without cheating VS. done cheating."

Free Tattoos

In the city of Le Havre, the owner of the CafeInk boutique is offering "Peace for Paris" tattoos for free.

"It's a way to empathize with the people's pain, to honor the victims and to rebel," Mathieu Coussin told French TV channel France 3 Haute Normandie on Wednesday.

"Thank you everyone who wished to witness, patiently, their solidarity with the victims of the attacks and to become closer to them by tattooing this symbol of peace. Thank you also to the tattoo artists of CafeInk who have given their precious time to support this cause. #WeAreUnited"

Marine is one of the people who got a tattoo on Saturday afternoon, less than 24 hours after the attacks. It was her first tattoo, and she is not used to needles, but she chose to get it for "for the victims and families who lost someone dear" and "to remember this date forever."

"This could have happened to my friends or myself," she told HuffPost France. "I don't want to forget that we are not sheltered by another attack, that we should make best use of our life, to stay strong and in solidarity."

Marine chose to put the symbol on her wrist. "I want it to be visible and to never be hidden," she said.

Grégory also went to the parlor on Saturday. He had two tattoos already, and felt the needed one symbolizing Paris for the sake of his 3-year-old daughter -- "to show that we can unite in the face of these acts," he said.

Tattooing As A 'Way To Take Action'

For some, getting tattoos in memory of Friday's attacks is a "way to take action."

"I don't know what more I can do to help my country and all her people," Marine said.

"I tattooed myself to show solidarity, and because I feel powerless in this situation," Camille added.

"A tattoo is an ancestral mark, which shows man's biggest fear: disappearance. Man is obsessed with leaving traces everywhere, including on his own body," psychosociologist Marie Cipriani-Crauste wrote in a 2008 study that appeared in Psychologies magazine. "This is what differentiates us from animals. Man needs symbols, and tattoos are one of them."

 This story originally appeared on HuffPost France and was translated into English. 

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The 2015 National Book Awards took place on Wednesday, where writers convened to celebrate some of the most notable books to be published this year. Satirist Andy Borowitz hosted the event, making quips between the announcements of the honorees and winners. A National Book Award nomination can provide a big boost for a writer's career, so each of the nominees in attendance were rightfully spotlighted. Below are the winners for each category.

FICTION

Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles: Stories

NONFICTION

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE

Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep

POETRY

Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus

In the past few years, the awards have recognized both decorated and emerging writers in near-equal measure. Last year, Phil Klay won in the fiction category for his debut short story collection about American war veterans and soldiers in Iraq. In poetry, storied writer Louise Glück took home the award for her collection Faithful and Virtuous Night.

This year in particular has run the gamut of writers who are new to the game, and those who are finally earning due recognition. The fiction nominees include a Pulitzer winner and a debut novelist who was also recognized as one of this year's 5 Under 35 nominees. And -- kudos to the fiction judges, who include Daniel Alarcón and Laura Lippman -- four of the five shortlist nominees were women.

So, even if the awards don't always correlate with a spike in book sales -- although in the case of last year's winners, they did -- they at the very least recognize the important work being done by a diverse range of writers.

In addition to this year's prizewinners, author Don DeLillo was honored for his body of literary work with the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. According to the National Book Foundation's Board of Directors, "DeLillo is being honored for a diverse body of work that examines the mores of contemporary modern American culture and brilliantly embeds the rhythms of everyday speech within a beautifully composed, contoured narrative."

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Visit any natural wonder -- even if it's just the hiking trail in your town -- and you'll soon recall how teensy we humans are in this big, BIG world. 

Photographer Daniel Alford knows this well. He shot a photo series, "Tiny People in Big Places," in South Africa, the U.K. and Iceland, while trekking landscapes alone for a week or more at a time. The results are stunning. And Alford says his trips convinced him that a digital detox trip offers the best kind of view. 

"Society has a mentality of short-term gains," he told HuffPost. "Nature doesn't work like that. Thinking of a scale of geological time gives you a much different perspective on things."

We're inclined to agree...

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When registered nurse Jean Manseau went to get her first two tattoos in October, patronizing a shop with a high health grade and an all-girl staff were high priorities. 

One of Manseau's tattoos is a sinus arrhythmia, or an irregular heart beat, on the back of her neck. She said she chose an imperfect sinus rhythm because, like her tattoo, she's not perfect. The other tattoo, on her forearm, reads "Just Breathe."

"I started as a foster child," Manseau told The Huffington Post. Despite a challenging upbringing that including being emancipated from her parents at age 14, Manseau finished community college and got a job as a nursing assistant. Two failed marriages, however, took a toll on her health.

"I had to put life back into prospective," she said. "I went to a community college, where I earned my associate degree in nursing, so I could give my children the life I didn't have."

Manseau’s dual tattoos represent her new mindset and celebrate the major weight loss that went with it. "Even with my arrhythmia of life, I still made it," she said. "Every time I am at the end of my rope, I read my wrist that says 'Just Breathe.' The tattoo represents making it through life with arrhythmias, and still keeping my heart intact to do the job I love."

One in five Americans has a tattoo, a tradition that popped up in the United States in the 1870s and became increasingly popular in wartime America, especially among U.S. Navy members. Today, tattoo culture cuts across all parts of society, from celebrities to the everyman and woman, and with meanings as varied at their owners. 

Medical tattoos, especially medical alert tattoos that replace alert bracelets, have reportedly grown in popularity, though experts disagree about whether alert tattoos are helpful or a harmful to EMTs during emergencies. Other medical-themed tattoos, like Manseau's, pay homage to careers in health care or simply show off the beauty of the human body, inside and out. 

See more inspiring medical tattoos below.

5 modern-day medical alerts:

7 people who wear their hearts on their sleeves:

5 well-drawn and curious minds:

6 peeks under the skin:

7 tools of the trade:

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Warning: This post is filled with explicit imagery. Very NSFW. Proceed with caution.

"What would her parents think?!" 

The paternalistic, pearl-clutching questions we ask about contemporary porn actors might seem a little more naive after visiting "Hardcore," an exhibit currently on display at the Museum of Sex in New York. Though we like to imagine our forebears lived in more innocent times, the parents and grandparents and great-grandparents of today's adult film stars might very well have been performing in -- or at least avidly consuming -- explicit erotica of their own.

"People tend to think that hardcore pornography is largely a modern invention," director of exhibitions Mark Snyder told The Huffington Post in an email. "However, when looking at literary and visual representations of sex acts from previous centuries, we see that, sexually speaking, there is very little territory that has not already been explored."

The exhibit, fully titled "Hardcore: A Century and a Half of Obscene Imagery," ranges from roughly 1821 to 1972. (Ever seen porn from 1821 before?) The dates themselves are significant -- Snyder pointed out that 1821 was the year of the nation's first obscenity trial.

Early erotic materials include lithographs of sex acts and the above brothel guide, a sort of menu of sexual offerings at various establishments. Early photographs depict uninhibited sexual encounters. "Throughout history," Snyder said, "every time there is a new invention or advancement in technology, it is, very shortly after, utilized for sex."

Accordingly, by the turn of the 20th century, porn was beginning to look fairly modern. "Early pornographic sex films, known in the United States as 'blue films,' 'smokers,' or 'stags,' began appearing almost as soon as motion pictures were invented," explained Snyder. The oldest surviving American stag film, "A Free Ride," is on display as part of "Hardcore." It was made in 1915.

"People have engaged in hardcore sex, and documented it, through all eras of history," Snyder pointed out. "They made sex toys; they had threesomes." And like modern pornographers, they didn't always restrict themselves to specialized sex toys -- the woman in the above photo is making a candle serve as a dildo. 

Items in the exhibit show same-sex encounters, blow jobs, and what we might consider BDSM today, as in this photo of a nude couple cavorting with a scary-looking whip:

While the advent of widespread adult video stories and, to an exponentially greater degree, free Internet porn has led to an explosion in access to hardcore erotica, the materials themselves aren't quite as groundbreaking as we may assume. "Many tropes that we associate with modern pornography were actually created much earlier," explained Snyder. "The 'money shot,' for example, was actually established during the Victorian Era." 

Mind. Blown. (No suggestive imagery intended.)

Throughout the nation's history, a tenuous divide between pornography and art has been enforced. Even museums, Snyder noted, often "sequester[ed] sexually-related artifacts away from the rest of their collection." 

The distance of many years, however, allows us to look at these titillating images and videos with something other than arousal -- the sepia-washed tones and dated hairstyles clash with our modern ideas of pornography and obscenity. Reframed by their antiquity, these vintage sexual poses take on an innocence, an artistic perspective on universal human needs. 

"Hardcore" isn't just a glimpse into our often forgotten history of graphic porn, but a reminder of how beautiful and powerful sex can be, in all its many forms. 

See more images from the exhibit below, and check out the full show at the Museum of Sex. "Hardcore" runs through 2016.

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Sarah Paulson has a lot to juggle right now: two Ryan Murphy shows ("American Horror Story: Hotel" and "American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson," which premieres in February) and a Todd Haynes movie ("Carol"). They couldn't seem more different, but watching Paulson bounce from one disparate project to the next is no surprise by now. On "AHS," she plays Sally, a dead inhabitant of the mysterious titular hotel whose frazzled ensemble and sadistic addictions are one with Murphy's fictional universe. In "American Crime Story," she plays Marcia Clark, the lead prosecutor in the 1995 Simpson murder trial. And in the 1950s-set "Carol," she plays Abby, the childhood friend of Cate Blanchett's married title character, with whom she is still in love after a previous romantic fling. Got all that? We sat down with Paulson earlier this week to discuss it all.

Between “American Horror Story” and “Carol,” and with “American Crime Story” on the horizon, you’ve having an incredible few months. All these roles are kind of living in the past, “Hotel” in a very different way than the others.  

Yeah, my “Hotel” character died in the ‘90s, so it’s a bit of another world and time that Sally is living in, for sure. And “Crime Story” takes place in the ‘90s, too.

And they’re very costume-driven, especially “Hotel” and “Carol.”

Wait till you see the costumes in “Crime Story.” That’s all I’ll tell you. I’m just saying let’s not throw that out because there are pretty exciting window-pane shoulder pads. Don’t forget. That’s gonna be in there.

Ah, yes. The spillover from the ‘80s, of course.

The spillover of the ‘80s into the early ‘90s. That’s going to be really special.

When you’re doing these rich costume dramas, how vital is it to know your character’s aesthetic before taking the role?

I had a meeting with Sandy Powell, the costume designer on this movie. I must have had three or four fittings with Sandy, who I think is a real genius. Cate said something really wonderful in the press conference this morning, which is that the clothes feel like clothes and not like costumes. As beautiful as they are, you don’t get the sense that it’s a costume designer going, “Let’s put her in a lot of this." And of course Todd decided everybody had a color.

For me, it was when Sandy Powell put the signet ring on me as Abby. I looked down at my hand and there was something about it. That and all of my scarves. I wore a lot of neck scarves with blazers. It just looked like photographs I had seen of gay women in the ‘50s. I immediately thought, “Oh, I know," and that kind of thing is very helpful when you’re playing something. Just like my leopard coat with Sally. If I don’t have a cigarette and that coat on, I don’t really know how to do the scene. It’s very weird.

At what point did you see Sally’s look? We have the advantage of historical hindsight when it comes to “Carol,” but the universe in “Hotel” is out of this world.

Well, that was a Ryan thing. He had also directed the first two episodes of “Crime Story” and I was doing that at the same time, so he was slammed. We had not had meetings about Sally’s look prior to my first day of shooting. He approved all my clothes, but in terms of my hair and makeup, we did not know what the hell we were going to do. I came in and I had all the eye makeup on, the way that it is now, and my hair was just sort of fucked up. Ryan literally looked at it and said, “I like everything, but the hair is not iconic enough.” He originally wanted my hair quite long, and I had short hair. I had this sort of funny thing where every year of “Horror Story,” I’ve had a different hair color or an opposing thing to the season before, and I’ve never had short blond hair. Also, I just didn’t want to put extensions in and I didn’t want to wear a wig. I’d been wearing a wig as Marcia Clark. I just said, “Please let me not.” He said, “Why don’t we crimp it?” I was like, “Crimp it, Myrtle Snow style?" He said, “Yes!” And then all of a sudden it became this triangular, weird bush. What’s the character’s name in “Blade Runner”? It's her, mixed with Magenta from “Rocky Horror Picture Show" and what’s-her-head from “Rugrats.” I looked like all of them. Instantly, I know that if I stood and there was a shadow of me on the wall, that the audience would go, “That’s Sally.” That’s what Ryan wanted, an immediately identifiable shape to her. I thought it was so smart and cool.

How often does that happen, where you aren’t sure how you’ll play a character until the camera rolls?

It depends. I did have the first scripts for the first two “Horror Stories” before we started, but I was so entrenched in the Marcia Clark of it all that I was just trusting the Sally thing was going to come out in whatever way. And because she was a drunky and because she was dead, I thought I didn’t have a lot of boundaries. It’s sort of limitless, what I can do with her -- and also because of the ways I’d played other characters, on “Horror Story” particularly. This girl had no heroism to her. I thought, “There’s going to be great freedom to me maybe not planning so much, the way I have in the past with other characters.” It was partly circumstantial because I didn’t have the time because of the Marcia Clark component of this, but also because it lends itself very nicely to the character. It’s like throwing caution to the wind and let the chips fall where they may, and see what comes out of you. The uglier it is, the rawer it is and probably the better it will be. I thought, “Don’t be overly precious about it.” I just sort of learned into it.

Is it a relief to play a character who’s so unlayered? She’s wild and manipulative, and that’s that.

Yeah, Sally is a little bit like “what you see is what you get.” There are things we’re going to learn about her as we go along that will be like, “Oh!” I think it’s just going to make it click about what all this need is about and where the addictions come from and what the addictions actually are because there are some that may not even be fully exposed yet.

She has an addiction to a lack of remorse.

Yes, and she also has an addiction to other people’s emotions and a fascination to watching people have them. She has reactions to them having emotions, but she doesn’t really know what the feeling is, yet she’s crying. She’s like, “I can know that this is sad, but I’m not really feeling sad, but I’m crying.” And she’s just always injured by everything. She feels so unseen. She’s like a walking bruise, and instead of retreating, she’ll punch you in the nose if you squeeze her bruise too hard. As opposed to becoming a wallflower, she’s just going to take you down. And I like that. I’ve never played a character like that before.

And she’s so the inverse of Abby. Obviously those two projects are apples to oranges, but in terms of your résumé, it's quite a range. Abby is someone who is in love and it’s not going to map out, and yet she has such a resilience, while Carol, whom she loves, is struggling to actualize herself in a lot of ways.

She’s got a strength, for sure, that Carol doesn’t have. But think about it: Abby didn’t choose to marry a man, she didn’t choose to go with the confines of 1950s societal norms. She just isn’t doing that. I don’t know if it’s about being bolder or braver or just a bigger inability to not go with what is inauthentic for her. And I don’t think she’s making a political statement about it -- it’s just who she is. But I think it’s probably going to cause her to maybe be a little lonelier. Maybe. But I think she wants Carol. Period. The end.

Do you see hope for Abby’s life outside of what we see in “Carol”? 

I do, for anybody who’s capable of that kind of selfless friendship. I mean, you’re in love with a person, but you’re going to go help them by taking the person they are in love with who isn’t you and getting them safely home, and then staying in contact with that person. Basically, I think it also speaks to the confines of society for gay women at that time. It was not a big enough world, so if you found a person you could relate to and who was of your tribe, you weren’t so likely to want to let go of them, no matter what, even if it meant that person was in love with someone else. You still wanted to be near them because that was your world that you had built. Carol and Abby have known each other since they were children.

At first, the movie just hints at Abby and Carol’s history. It takes a while to get the full story and I was worried it wouldn't come at all.

It’s almost at the end, and it’s done in a very unemotional way, just like, “Here’s what it was.” There had been a scene in the movie that we shot that didn’t make the film, which was a scene between Abby and [Therese, Carol's new love interest, played by Rooney Mara] in the kitchen right before Carol and Therese take off on the road, where basically Abby is really questioning Therese’s motivation and what she wants and what she’s after. I spent a lot of time making it very clear to Therese that Carol is very fragile and you better not be fucking with my friend. But that scene is not in the movie, so some of that jealousy that I have was very clear in that scene. Because it’s not there, I think some of the other stuff is a bit more mysterious, which is fine. Having a mysterious character that’s got so much strength and has enough of an impact where you still feel the weight of Abby in the movie, I think is a plenty fine thing.

In reading the script for the first time, were you hoping for that backstory or did you want the mystery to linger? 

I didn’t know what I was wanting because I didn’t know what the story was yet. When I read the script, there was also a moment where I ask Cate's character to get back together with me that’s also not in the movie. I say, “Let’s open the furniture store. Let’s try again, you and me.” She rebuffs me and says no. It’s then when Abby says, “Well, I’ve got my eye on a redhead anyway, and it’s fine.” That stuff probably added too much confusion in terms of keeping this story very clearly about Carol's love affair and not about my pain about not being with Carol. As much as it was sad for me for Abby to lose those scenes, for the movie’s sake, it was probably cleaner and better. But in the script that I read, I got everything I needed in terms of all that history between Carol and myself. All of my jealousy was in the script, so I had that at my fingertips. And then in the book there’s much more Abby than in the screenplay.

It was definitely an example of beautiful female friendship and loyalty. Yes, this friendship did have a romantic component at one time, but it was not something that was going to cause the relationship to dissolve because it didn’t work out romantically. They had a bigger bond than that.

Aside from the fact that every director works differently, does being on the set of “Carol” feel radically different from the set of “American Horror Story”? “Carol” is serene and quiet, while “AHS” is loud and audacious.

Yes, it was not a huge crew on “Carol.” It was a very contained. We did the movie quickly. It was only six weeks and I was there for half of that. There was an element of ease and a quiet restraint, whereas “Horror Story” is just a shitshow in the sense that something is happening at a breakneck pace every second. We’re trying to get a blood gag to work and prosthetics applied, and, oh, we’re going to do a new scene now all of a sudden, and you’re like, “I gotta learn these pages!” There’s something very immediate about “Horror Story,” where you are just ready to go all the time. Your game is on and ready, and there’s something about "Carol" -- and it was partly the tone that Todd set -- that was incredibly subdued, but not without great energy and purpose. There was a quiet respect for the material and everyone was so excited to be there and wanting to get it right. Visually, there was a kind of mistiness. The way it looked in the movie was exactly the way it felt when we were shooting it, and that doesn’t always happen when you see something you’ve done.

Have you often watched your work and said, “That’s not the way I pictured that”?

Yes! More often than not.

What has surprised you the most?

Maybe it was during “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” actually. We shot that movie in two sections, so two weeks was the cult section, and then the family stuff with me and [Elizabeth Olsen and Hugh Dancy] was all a separate section, so I never came into contact with any of those people. It was only my imagining of that life that Martha was living based on the script. Also, sometimes we would be shooting -- and I didn’t even really know this -- but we’d be doing a scene where Hugh Dancy and I are in the kitchen having an intimate conversation where you would think the conversation we were having was the thing that was being photographed, but actually the camera was between us and shooting Lizzy Olsen in the other room, and that ended up being on screen. There were just so many things to do with the camera that I had no idea were happening, so you end up seeing it and going, “Wait, what? Oh! Wow!” Whereas with “Carol,” the way everything looked is exactly the way it looks. It was not a surprise to me at all.

With “AHS,” you lost a head but gained a lot of blood. This is a very gory season.

A lot of blood, and death. This is the first time I’m dead on the show. I’m the only survivor of all my seasons of “Horror Story,” except for now. I’ve lost that title, which sucks.

Is it a relief to play only one character this season?

It was an interesting thing. Because I had played the double-headed girls on “Freak Show” last year, somehow it really prepared me because I was doing Marcia Clark and Sally at the same time this year. I was very used to working in a schizophrenic, split way as the twins. So I’d go in one morning and play Marcia Clark, and then the next day I’d be playing Sally and then I’d have to scrub Sally off when I was going into the trailer as Marcia Clark the next day. So, at this point, it’s old hat for me on “Horror Story.” The more frenetic and insane, the more it feels like home. If it were calm on the set of “Horror Story,” I think I’d have to call somebody and say something is really wrong over here.

Was filming “Crime Story” as wild, given it’s also a Ryan Murphy production?

Very, very different. It’s not kinetic like that. That story is a story we know the beginning of and we know the end of. He can’t come in and sort of magically change anything, so it’s going to be interesting.

"Carol" opens in select theaters on Nov. 20. "American Horror Story: Hotel" airs Wednesdays on FX at 10 p.m. EST. "American Crime Story" premieres Feb. 2 on FX.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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Always in the holiday spirit, the Holderness family is back with a new Thanksgiving-themed parody video. 

But this time, they didn't just cover one song -- they created an "Ultimate Thanksgiving Mashup" featuring Adele's "Hello," Drake's "Hotline Bling" and the international dance hit "Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)" by Silentó.

The rewritten lyrics cover some common Thanksgiving experiences, like cooking all night and day, watching your picky kids pass over the dishes you spent hours preparing and relieving your stress with a glass bottle of wine.

"Now watch me sip my chardon-nae-nae," sings mom Kim Holderness. "Now do the turkey leg," adds dad Penn. 

Happy basting!

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The tiny town of Minturn, Colorado can never loo-se. That's because it just won the title "Best Public Restroom in America."

Earlier this month, corporate services company Cintas gave Minturn's new bathrooms top honors following a national competition that included 10 other town toilets. 

The Denver Post reports Minturn's public restrooms, installed in March, were designed by the city planning director to resemble the passageway into a Rocky Mountain mine, a nod to the town's rich mining and railroad history. With just over 1,000 residents, the town takes great pride in its proximity to Colorado's epic natural wonders. And boy, is it worth the (bathroom) trip:

Inside, the loos feature turquoise and copper-colored walls, with steel butterflies on the ceilings.

Other contest finalists included a whiskey barrel bathroom in Charleston, South Carolina:

A salt mine bathroom in Hutchinson, Kansas:

This swanky loo at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire:

And the homiest nursing suite EVER at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, Ohio:

These potties are pretty, indeed. 

But trust us: Bathrooms are NOT quite so beautiful on every trip: 

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This week is Transgender Awareness Week, an initiative that aims to raise visibility of trans and gender non-conforming people and communities and acknowledge the issues they continue to face. Culminating with Trans Day of Remembrance on Nov. 20, which honors trans individuals who lost their lives to acts of violence, the week illuminates the unjust struggles so many endure simply because they're being their authentic selves.

In conjunction with Trans Awareness Week, we've compiled a follow-up to our previous list of multi-disciplinary artists who identify as transgender, gender variant, genderqueer and gender failure. Through their practices, the following artists tell their stories on their own terms, attempting to change not only the landscape of contemporary art but also the future of how we understand gender and identity. They do this, of course, through making some damn good artwork that touches on feelings of estrangement, the concept of gender performance and the stories of marginalized voices. 

1. Juliana Huxtable

Huxtable is a New York-based artist, DJ and nightlife personality. You may have seen her metallic figure reclining in the New Museum Triennial thanks to Frank Benson's new 3D-scanned plastic sculpture "Juliana," discussed as one of the first "sculptural depiction[s] of a body" that the trans community could relate to in a major museum. Or perhaps, in the same exhibition, you noticed her poems and futurist photographs, one of which features the artist as "cyborg, cunt, priestess, witch, Nuwaubian princess."

Born intersex and assigned a male gender at birth, Huxtable was raised in a conservative, Baptist, Texas home. After struggling with issues of identity and gender growing up, she attended Bard College and joined the queer arts collective House of LaDosha. In the years since, Huxtable, who adopted the name from the Cosby sitcom, has become an Internet star and "it" girl, not to mention an artist to be reckoned with. Last week, her MoMA co-commissioned Performa piece "There Are Certain Facts That Cannot Be Disputed" explored the ideas of history as cosplay, fan-fiction and a fluid medium. The artist's constant experimentation with how the historical and the technological merge to form one's identity continues to intrigue. 

2. So Brown 

Brown is a Brooklyn-based musician whose sound takes inspiration from the delta blues and classical music, along with gender-complicating rebels such as St. Vincent and David Bowie. Brown grew up as a boy in Texas and Alabama; although now he occupies a more gender-fluid realm. "My attitude has always been, if Mick Jagger or John Lennon can do it, than so can I," Brown wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. 

"I'm always seeking to explore new frontiers of human and gender experience," Brown continued. "I'd also like to say: I don't think the trans experience is only limited to people actively transitioning. I think it touches some deeper truths -- that we have both male and female energy inside of us, and I for one don't want to be in any way limited by modern American ideas of what that means I should be or do." 

3. Geo Wyeth

New York-based musician and performance artist Wyeth creates alien soundscapes that are spiritual, technological, haunting and full of camp. In an earlier interview with The Huffington Post, Wyeth explained: "Whenever I have the urge to create anything or make something, I often pretend to be other people or channel an energy or force that later maybe develops into a kind of character."

Through his musical performances, Wyeth explores the oddities of living in a body and the possibilities of transcending it. 

"My performances come from a very personal place," Wyeth continued. "My work is queer because I am queer. It comes from the kind of life that I lead. For me, being queer and being an artist are sort of synonymous. All the aspects of who I am are present in the work. There are all kinds of things about my identity that come through the work, and that's true for all artists. Someone recently asked me how gender plays into my performance and I found that sort of odd. Of course it does -- it does for everybody. When you see some dude on the stage with his rock band shredding on his guitar, he is also using gender in performance. Of course my work is queer and of course its trans and it's also coming from someone who likes macaroni and cheese. I hope that all of who I am is present in the work."

4. niv Acosta

Born and raised in New York City, Acosta is an artist of Dominican descent whose work revolves around movement and performance. For the last four years, Acosta has expanded upon the "the denzel series," a six-part choreographed project that explores the intersection of race and identity. The piece revolves around Acosta's relationship to Denzel Washington, an icon of black masculinity, who represents, according to Acosta, "one of the few consistently positive representations of black men in the media."

"I am interested in creating a history for myself," Acosta explains in his artist statement. "I am creating a time capsule. I am creating bodies of work, which in their entirety address larger concepts that become distilled with time. My current interest with what I have been naming 'the denzel series' is a reflection of that idea." 

5. Pilar Gallego

Gallego is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work explores the desire for masculinity and the shapes such desire takes. In one series of drawings, Gallego recreated a number of government issue IDs, highlighting the variations in gender performance between each issued photograph. "ID cards carry a lot of personal information, and this brings about major concerns for transgender and gender-variant people who fuck with the facts presented on identification cards," Gallego explained to Lily Binns in an interview. "While making a correlation to the common practice amongst the transgender community to document one’s transition, I was thinking about what ID cards represent -- a submission to authority -- and how that authority is undermined and challenged, most of the times at the expense of the ID card bearer."

"I am deeply invested in how that dynamic plays out between heteronormativity and queerness," Gallego added. "How society perceives a readable genderqueer person, how discrimination based on surfaces plays out, and what’s hidden under our surfaces. A new challenge I’ve given myself is to expose what’s under the queer facade."

6. Nicki Green 

Green is a Bay Area-based artist who works with traditional craft media including ceramics and textile to document and investigate the histories of marginalized communities. Look closer at Green's traditional-looking dishware and you'll notice queer and feminist imagery float to the surface.

"I became interested in blue and white glaze during my undergrad at San Francisco Art Institute really just because of how ubiquitous the surface is," Green explained in an interview with Callie Garp, "and in doing more research, was struck by the way it has been used in so many cultural heritages to illustrate history, it felt like a great way to depict queer and trans people in an illustrative way. I tend to have these ah-hah moments where my research will fork off into a direction that will lead me to the next body of work, which will lead me to new research, and so on. Right now it’s about transness and Judaism, and I recently started thinking about mushrooms as a metaphor for queerness ..."

7. Mariah Garnett

Garnett is a Los Angeles-based video artist mixing elements of documentary, narrative and experimental film. "Using source material that ranges from found text to iconic gay porn stars," a statement on her website reads, "Garnett often inserts herself into the films, creating cinematic allegories that codify and locate identity."

Her 2014 20-minute film "Full Burn" follows U.S. war veterans in their civilians lives, navigating how the military shaped their relationships to their bodies. One veteran works as a massage therapist, the rest work as Hollywood stuntmen, pushing past their fears to push their masculine body to its limits. 

"The film reveals a processing of trauma through the reenactment of danger," reads a statement from the Hammer Museum, where the film showed as part of Made in LA. "It proposes a confluence of the real with the fake -- the reality of war as a real experience and the ways in which the individual veterans process the residual effects of war through the artificial techniques of Hollywood."

8. Oli Rodriguez

Rodriguez is a Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist whose work revolves around ideas of family, desire and queerness. In his most well-known piece, "The Papi Project," Rodriguez investigates elements of loss, family, technology and hookup culture by looking for men who had sex with his father, who passed away in the '90s from AIDS-related illness. 

"I am looking for men who had sex with my dad," Rodriguez posted on various gay hookup websites, along with a photo of his father. "He was known as Troy, Peter, Pedro and other aliases in the late '70s/'80s/early '90s, before his death from complications of AIDS in '93. I'm his son and I want to hook up with you. I'm open to dinner, role play and other interactions, ideas? Below is his picture. If you had relations with him, please contact me."

In the video above, "The Nanny Project," Rodriguez documents a little boy and his "manny" playing dress-up and pretending to be princesses. The piece investigates feelings of shame, play, performance and technology through an innocent yet taboo childhood ritual. 

9. Harry Dodge

Dodge is a Los Angeles-based artist working with performance, video, sculpture, drawing and writing. (He is also the partner of The Argonauts author Maggie Nelson.) Dodge's 2015 exhibition "Consent-not-to-be-a-single-being" -- the title of which speaks to his gender fluidity -- features playful, cartoonish geometric sculptures that toy with the conception of identity, appearing as colorful friends you'd find either in a Pixar short or a drug-fueled hallucination.

In the video above "Love Streams," Dodge employs the lofty vocabulary of old school YouTube science tutorials to lecture about the Danish physicist Niels Bohr and discuss the potentials of human connection. 

10. Malic Amalya

Amalya, based in San Francisco, identifies as a queercore moving image artist working in 16mm film and lo-fi video. His work focuses on the effects of estrangement -- whether a decaying plant or an abandoned building.

The 2014 film "Towards the Death of Cinema" toys with the possibility of film as a destroyer of images. In the artist's words: "'Towards the Death of Cinema' is a celluloid performance that allows audience members to take in the individual photograph of the film frame for longer than 1/24th of a second at the expense of the integrity of the image. Cutting off the sprocket holes located on the edge of the frame, the projector’s inherent movement forward is bypassed. By allowing the film to warp in the heat of the projector, the audience is also given the rare opportunity to savor the destruction of film."

11. A.L. Steiner

Steiner, based in Los Angeles, describes herself as a "skeptical queer eco-feminist androgyne." Working in photography, video, installation, collage, performance, lectures and writing, Steiner infuses her work with humor, perversity, irreverence and political fire. She's also one half of Ridykeulous, a radical lesbian curatorial initiative formed with artist Nicole Eisenman. 

Steiner is mostly known for her installations of collaged digital photographs, documenting her artistic and social community. Roberta Smith referred to them as "raunchy, out-there photographs of almost nothing but women having a blast being women: on their own, with their children or with other women, whether friends, lovers or comrades in arms. I can't imagine anyone of the female persuasion not getting at least a little high at the sight of this array, which covers most of the available space on the bright-orange painted walls. Men are allowed, but this is definitely a clubhouse."

See our original roundup of trans artists changing the landscape of art here.

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"The Wiz Live!" airs in two weeks but we have phenomenal costumes to admire in the meantime. 

NBC will air the "The Wiz Live!" on Dec. 3, as part of their one-night-only live musical events. 

The upcoming musical is a revival of the original 1975 Broadway production of the "The Wiz" that became a film in 1978 that featured Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Lena Horne and Richard Pryor, among other stars.  

"The Wiz Live!" will tap memories from the original musical with songs like, "Ease on Down the Road," and with cast member Stephanie Mills -- the original Dorothy on Broadway, now playing Auntie Em. 

The cast including, Common as Bouncer, Queen Latifah as The Wiz, Mary J. Blige as Evilene (Wicked Witch of the West), Ne-Yo as Tin Man, Uzo Aduba as Glinda and David Alan Grier as Cowardly Lion -- are already decked out in costume and we're loving it! 

Check them out!

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Many parents try hard to teach their children the value of sharing their toys and asking nicely when they want to play with someone else's stuff. But as the latest installment in "Conversations With My 2-Year-Old" shows, this parenting goal can be difficult to achieve.

In this new video, dad Matthew Clarke introduces a new 2-year-old -- his Shepherd (portrayed by grown man Michael P. Northey) -- to join his now-5-year-old daughter Coco (portrayed by grown man David Milchard). The toddler has some things to figure out when it comes to "asking nicely," and his dad's lesson doesn't quite register. 

If this episode is any indication, we're in for another hilarious parenting journey with little Shepherd.

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