A really great video about a woman who wants to get rid of an old accordion she has been holding onto for a long time. Instead of simply selling it on craigslist, however, she puts an ad up with an interesting proposal: you come to a dinner party that she's hosting and perform in front of her guests (and judges a la "America Idol"). The winner receives the accordion for free.

I think my favorite part about this video, however, is the guy you see in the bottom corner at 3:24. Keep looking for him throughout the video, because his reactions are simply amazing (I just about spit my water all over my iPad when I first saw his annoyed/apathetic reaction).

I missed this during the last holiday season, but Barack's got a pretty good voice.

Great video piece by the BBC on the saving, and subsequent attempts at renovation, of the house where John Coltrane wrote "A Love Supreme."

Seeking relief from bullying, Brittany transferred to Jackson Middle School. Her very first day of eighth grade, eight boys crowded around her on the bus home. "Hey, Brittany, I heard your friend Sam shot herself," one began.

"Did you see her blow her brains out?"

"Did you pull the trigger for her?"

"What did it look like?"

"Was there brain all over the wall?"

"You should do it too. You should go blow your head off."

A long but necessary read about the multiple student suicides that happened in the Anoka-Hennepin school district in around 2010. It doesn't really matter what your views are on gay rights. It really doesn't even matter if you think these kids were lying, making up these wild stories about being harassed and tormented by their peers. Any person with a soul should have seen that these kids needed help, politics be damned. Shame on anyone who thinks otherwise.

Torrenting is probably too hassle-y for the average viewer: Installing Transmission, VLC, perhaps re-encoding to watch on my TV—but I'm pretty techy (ok, a geek) and have been doing this for years. However, if a show is available on iTunes—as South Park is to me now I've set up a US iTunes account (yet another tech hassle I had to overcome…)—I'll click and buy. It's simple, quick, better quality, not to mention legal. It's also cheap.

Preach it, Peter Serafinowicz.

Record label Sony has apologised for increasing the price of two Whitney Houston albums in the UK, hours after her death on Saturday.

The wholesale cost of the two LPs - Houston's Ultimate Collection and Greatest Hits - went up by about £3 each, causing an automatic price increase on iTunes.

Is there anyone who is even remotely surprised that the record labels tried doing this?

A nerd needs a project because a nerd builds stuff. All the time. Those lulls in the conversation over dinner? That’s the nerd working on his project in his head.

It’s unlikely that this project is a nerd’s day job because his opinion regarding his job is, “Been there, done that”. We’ll explore the consequences of this seemingly short attention span in a bit, but for now this project is the other big thing your nerd is building and I’ve no idea what is, but you should.

At some point, you, the nerd’s companion, were the project. You were showered with the fire hose of attention because you were the bright and shiny new development in your nerd’s life. There is also a chance that you’re lucky and you are currently your nerd’s project. Congrats. Don’t get too comfortable because he’ll move on, and, when that happens, you’ll be wondering what happened to all the attention. This handbook might help.

Attention: significant others of nerds. This is for you. (Sorry, Shannon.)

With insider trading charges pending over LetsBuyIt, Schmitz decided it was time to lay low (by his standards); “in fear for his life,” he fled to Thailand in January of 2002. On his website, he hinted at possible suicide, saying he would be crossing “to a new world,” Hale-Bopp cult style. But instead of offing himself, he declared that he wanted to be known as “King Kimble the First, Ruler of the Kimpire” — a label he would apply to his future projects. (It’s listed as his title on LinkedIn.)

This guy is basically Richie Rich, if he didn't start with his family's money, built his fortune around multiple unethical business strategies and was hard into psychedelics.

A fantastic biography of Neil deGrasse Tyson (from Playboy, of all places, but the link is SFW). A must-read if you consider yourself a fan of his.

I challenge you to fully realize how awesome life is. To: Party hard. Go on adventures. Make good love.  Be bold. Scare yourself. Laugh it up. Be awesome. You already are, and when you can party without alcohol, the rest of your life will become a party too.