It’s Friday! In celebration of this momentous occasion, especially if this will also be a long weekend for you thanks to Columbus Day, here are some completely unrelated but highly enjoyable posts floating around the Blogads network:

GalaDarling gives a round-up of some of her recent favorite Internet finds:

A round-up within a round-up. This is very inception-y.

Design Seeds offers up pretty design inspiration based on colorful yarn:

Almost inspires a person to learn how to knit. Almost.

Immaculate Infatuation’s weekly Friday Fives feature gets a revamped format from Anson Mount of Hell on Wheels:

Rather than Mount just giving a straightforward rundown his favorite restaurant recs, the man wrote a screenplay. Definitely worth a read.

In case you’ve forgotten, the Rich Kids of Instagram are still rich. Need proof? They’re still documenting it, too:

So very happy for them.

The brave WTF, Pinterest? blogger divulges a dark secret–her ’80s glamour shot:

Timeless.

photo by flickr user Bob B. Brown

In light of the fact that the Blogads HQ is partaking in a gluttonous “Just Desserts” potluck today, I thought it would be a great cruel idea to highlight some of the inspiring fitness features from around the Blogads network:

What Should We Call Me illustrates the downside of working out with others:

No one likes a smug show-off, especially when you feel like a walrus.

Your Life After 25 lists the medical benefits of swimming:

When you feel weightless in the water, that means the workout’s done, right?

Fit Bottomed Girls’ Erin divulges her fitness confessions:

I feel validated in thinking that showers are kind of overrated now.

Healthkicker shares helpful info on fitting in exercise at the office:

A post-Blogads potluck must!

Betches Love This know the importance of expensive workout clothes:

If you can’t be athletic, at least you can dress like you are.

photo by flickr user Ulf Liljankoski

TIME curated a list of the top 50 Web sites that the “editors find to be useful, entertaining, innovative or just plain addictive,”  with Blogads’ partner Lamebook making the cut!

Lamebook.com is a popular and consistently hilarious resource to view the latest ridiculous and lame posts that people find worth sharing on Facebook. TIME described Lamebook as being “less about Facebook and more about human nature — whether you’re into social networking or not, there’s something for everyone here.”

We here at Blogads are thrilled for Lamebook’s recognition, and we highly suggest for anyone interested in the absurdity of human nature to check it out. Make sure to also check out the other sites that TIME highlights here.

Can a few friends move an election?

Yes, according to a recent study by James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego. During the Congressional Election of 2010, Fowler’s study split 61 million Facebook users into three groups: 98% saw an ad saying “I voted” along with pictures of friends who had clicked the “I Voted” button, 1% saw the ad with no pictures of friends, and the final 1% weren’t shown the ad at all.

20% of those who saw pictures of friends responded to the ad, compared to 18% of the “friendless” users who responded. The study also discovered that the first group was 0.39% more likely to vote than the others.

Not much, say you? In total, out of 61 million users to see the ad, approximately 238,000 extra votes were cast, estimates Fowler. Considering Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio (swing states in 2008) were all won by a margin of less than 300,000 votes, that number could mean the difference between winning and losing a Presidential election.

The real-world impact is undeniable, and according to NPR’s Shankar Vedantam, campaigns are already using followers and subscribers to impact the 2012 elections:

“…[E]very time you get a message on Facebook from the Obama or Romney campaigns, or every time you get a tweet from them, saying please like this message or please retweet this, what they’re doing is taking advantage of the fact that when you amplify a message from the campaign, it’s much more effective than the campaign sending out messages directly.”

Maybe General Motors, which caused a stir back in May by pulling its entire Facebook ad budget due to a “lack of impact on consumers,” should take this as a friendly hint to reconsider.

Photo by Flickr user Justin Grimes

Half of the fun in procrastinating on the Internet is the opportunity for unexpected education. To help you get back to being a productive human being, for today at least, here are some quick learnings curated from around the Blogads network:

Methodshop — Portland vs. Austin
With the addition of the Portland Digital eXperience (PDX) to the MusicFestNW lineup, MFNW may be the new and arguably better version of Austin’s SXSW. Well, I’ll be!

Regretsy – View It in a Room
“Claw Predator Rings” are a real thing. These exist in the world. Someone makes these…and now you’re better for knowing.

The Comics Curmudgeon – I’ll just have to “suspend” my disbelief (that anyone would say this ever)
Low-end suspenders are slightly more affordable than low-end belts. This, I truly did not know.

Lamebook – Spelling Counts
Proof-reading is dead. This isn’t breaking news, but we should all take a moment. RIP.

Crazy Aunt Purl – A year from now you’ll wish you had started today
September is a great month to start fresh on a goal. New Year’s resolutions are for suckers.

photo by flickr user Marc_Smith

The countdown for getting in some prime, last-minute white pants-wearing has begun. Before celebrating Labor Day just yet, take a few moments to appreciate the season with these summer-inspired posts from around the Blogads network:

Immaculate Infatuation– Instagram Challenge: #Still Summer
Enter the foodie contest by taking pics of delicious, seasonal dishes on Instagram. Don’t forget to tag photos with #stillsummer and @immaculateinfat.

Trailer Addict – Summer Must-Sees
If you’re still deciding what movies to go to this weekend, check out previews for what’s already in theaters as well as what’s soon to come!

Tom and Lorenzo – Gal on the Street
If you missed out on any of this year’s summer styles, get caught up with these highlights.

Mr. Kate – DIY Swiss Braids Hair Tutorial
Kate helps you beat the heat with this chic, braided up-do.

Turntable Kitchen – The August 2012 Mix
Send summer off right with this awesome August soundtrack.

photo by flickr user {Charlotte.Morrall}

Lots of students are heading back to school right about now. In light of all of the new binders and fresh optimism that mark this time of year, here’s some light reading for all from around the Blogads network:

IMBOYCRAZY– the blind leading the blind (pat 93)
Alexi passes along some “funny, because it’s true” life lessons.

Pintester – Nostril-Mouth Speakers
Teaching us How-Not-To make DIY speakers out of your face.

#WhatShouldWeCallMe – When my teacher assigns homework for the first day of school
Starting the year off strong. Nailed it.

Betches Love This – Betches love this college: Cornell University
Calling all Cornell freshmen: here’s your Spark Notes guide for the year.

GalaDarling – Join Us at the Blogcademy in New York City!
Headmistress Gala Darling is cohosting this blogger weekend retreat in October.

photo by flickr user Horia Varlan

Limited Run, a company that helps artists and musicians sell products online, says that 80% of the clicks they bought through Facebook ads came from robots.

Facebook was charging us for clicks, yet we could only verify about 20% of them actually showing up on our site. At first, we thought it was our analytics service. We tried signing up for a handful of other big name companies, and still, we couldn’t verify more than 15-20% of clicks. So we did what any good developers would do. We built our own analytic software. Here’s what we found: on about 80% of the clicks Facebook was charging us for, JavaScript wasn’t on. And if the person clicking the ad doesn’t have JavaScript, it’s very difficult for an analytics service to verify the click. What’s important here is that in all of our years of experience, only about 1-2% of people coming to us have JavaScript disabled, not 80% like these clicks coming from Facebook. So we did what any good developers would do. We built a page logger. Any time a page was loaded, we’d keep track of it. You know what we found? The 80% of clicks we were paying for were from bots. That’s correct. Bots were loading pages and driving up our advertising costs.

When Limited Run tried to get more information from Facebook… silence. “So we tried contacting Facebook about this. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t reply. Do we know who the bots belong too? No. Are we accusing Facebook of using bots to drive up advertising revenue. No. Is it strange? Yes.”

In the comments, the CEO of Yousites says the same thing happened to his company.

And here’s a deep dive into Facebook “likes” from bots, which concludes that “someone or a group of someones is utilizing bot networks and compromised accounts to sell actions in Facebook, and the voluminous Liking is a byproduct of attempting to randomize any patterns that would identify their core network or their customers.”

And while we’re on the topic of clickbots, don’t forget last year’s attack of the bimbots!

A survey of 2,011 liberal and conservative blog readers taken in the 24 hours after the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of Obamacare found that liberal blog reader support for the ruling was strong, while conservative blog readers were unhappy about the ruling. What’s surprising is that the average Internet reader (13,311 responses) was even MORE displeased by the ruling.

This data is in sharp contrast to polling done in the days before the ruling yesterday, in which a plurality of Americans hoped the Supreme Court would not overrule healthcare law. Is our data wonky or is there a serious undercurrent of dissent here?

The poll, taken after the SCOTUS decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act, shows that liberal blog readers are over 2.5x more likely than conservative readers to support this ruling.

To round out today’s post, we’re including some background data gathered in recent weeks on people’s health and health care coverage.

Conservatives are 1.5x more likely than liberals to feel older than their current age.

Yet, liberal and conservative blog readers are equally likely to pay for health insurance through an employer or other organization, and 14% less likely than the internet average.

Posts about our prior survey results are here, here and here and here.

The Supreme Court results come from surveys conducted by Blogads in conjunction with Civic Science on 6/28 and 6/28; the general health questions were answered between March and June on political blogs including Political Wire, Wonkette, Drudge Retort, Right Wing News, Althouse, Outside the Beltway, News Hounds, Pandagon, Linkiest, Wizbang, Viral Footage, Informed Comment, The Agonist, Jack and Jill Politics, Yid With Lid, Burnt Orange Report, Chicago Boyz, NoisyRoom, The Steel Deal, MyDD and damnum absque injuria.

Download full results