Does the tambourine that LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy slides onto his arm in this video of him performing "Yr City's a Sucker" in Ireland last year look like it might hurt? The sharp edges of those little cymbals digging into the soft flesh of his bicep? It probably doesn't. Because of all the laughing, or fake laughing, he's doing while singing the song. A team of scientists led by Oxford evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar recently tested responses to painful stimuli like a super-cold arm wrap, or an increasingly tight blood-pressure cuff, before and after the subjects were made to laugh, and found that pain threshholds were significantly higher after laughing. As the Times' James Gorman reports, "The simple muscular exertions involved in producing the familiar ha, ha, ha, he said, trigger an increase in endorphins, the brain chemicals known for their feel-good effect."

Remember how we told you, with great excitement, that Death Bear would be touring Brooklyn over the weekend? (Death Bear is a conceptual art project (OKAY) in which a fellow named Nate Hill dresses up as a big scary bear, comes to your house, and takes away objects that cause you pain or anxiety.) Apparently this did not end well. (Surprise?) Or it ended too well, when Death Bear ended up at the home of his own ex-lover. And was unable to take away her pain. READ MORE

Whelp, there goes a nice moral rationalization for eating eating seafood. Turns out goldfish recognize and remember pain and dead salmon recognize human facial expressions. (WHAT.) You kinda always suspected, right? I mean, the way lobsters scream when you stab them.