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Project-urok-mara-wilson — Writer and performer Mara Wilson speaks about her experiences with anxiety and depression in a video for Project UROK.

Mara Wilson, writer and performer who made her name as a child actress in Matilda and Mrs. Doubtfire, is sitting in front of a gray screen, hair gathered in a messy bun, wearing a sweatshirt with a stylized cat face on it and a big blue pin that says "UROK." In a casual tone that previous generations could never have conjured for such personal subjects, she is talking about anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder and the arc of her life from "anxious kid" to "anxious adult."

"I wish somebody had told me it's OK to be anxious, that you don't have to fight it," Wilson says. "When you face anxiety ... when you understand it's just this false alarm in your body, then you can work with it, then you can overcome it."

Wilson is one of the celebrities who have recorded videos for a new video platform, Project UROK, which stands for "you are OK." The month-old nonprofit features candid videos with comedians, actors and other public figures talking frankly about their mental health and how they came to accept themselves.

"We're trying to think of ourselves as a sort of mental illness destigmatization network," Jenny Jaffe, founder of Project UROK.

The aim is to use the force of the Internet for good — a vast departure from the texting, bullying, shaming minefield of social media that can, and has, driven teens to suicide from a sense of isolation. Project UROK aims to give teenagers struggling with mental illness a sense of community, an assurance that they aren't alone and permission to see mental health as a subject that can be mentioned out loud.

Jaffe was inspired by past campaigns that put a human face on important issues, such as the It Gets Better Project, which used YouTube and other social platforms to give hope to LGBT youth facing bullies and harassment. But while other destigmatization platforms exist for mental illness, such as Glenn Close's campaign Bring Change 2 Mind, they're geared more toward adults.

"The generational difference in how people over a certain age interact with the Internet versus how teens and young adults do is monumental," Jaffe says

Teens, as always, speak a different language: the language of text, of Snapchat, of celebrity YouTube bloggers and Instagrams. So Project UROK, and its staff, always keep the language of modern sharing in mind. Instead of asking teens to seek information in a formal way that isn't natural for them — making a phone call or going to a library, as previous generations might have done — the project harnesses the power of the Internet.

In a connected age, using shareable video for something other than cats and memes has proven to have obvious appeal. Kids of all ages and backgrounds have written to the team, expressing interest to record their own videos and write blog posts. Since it officially launched on April 17, the platform has racked up nearly 900 YouTube subscribers, about 18,000 views and more than 13,000 Twitter followers.

The project also relies on another key aspect of the Internet: the first-person voice.

"This is a platform we built for whoever wants to use it. It's really great to have a celebrity or public figure endorsement, because it's someone people can look up to ... but we want it to take form as a two-way conversation," Jaffe says. "My message is, if you're comfortable telling your story, we want to hear your story."

Users can send an unlisted YouTube video or raw file to the team, and they'll post it to the Project UROK and also monitor comments to ensure a safe space.

What 'mental illness' really means

Mental illness is common among adolescents, and yet it's still a subject very much in the shadows. Approximately 1 in 5 teens between the ages of 13 and 18 live with a mental health condition, but only 20% of those teens actually receive help.

Stigma, according to the National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI), is leaving them behind.
Jaffe feels we're finally progressing in terms of the conversation surrounding mental health, but she says there's a long way to go — especially in the U.S., where mental health and physical health are not given equal importance.

"Mental health is often seen as a luxury," she says. "Just as you need to be able to find an affordable doctor in your neighborhood, you also need to be able to find somebody you can talk to about how you're feeling. Destigmatization and spreading information about what 'mental illness' really means is the first step."

Acceptance of mental health

Jaffe, still in her 20s, is not so far removed from her teen years. She remembers keenly the isolation she felt as a teenager, when she struggled with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Even with professional help and support from her family, acceptance took years.

She turned to comedy to fight her demons and help other people talk about theirs.

"I got into comedy because it helped me when I was at such dark points in my life," Jaffe says.
She decided to switch gears after she wrote about her experience with exposure therapy and saw the outpouring of responses from people who could relate.

"I was doing [comedy] as a sort of indirect way of helping other people who were in similar situations. Project UROK is a way of doing what I was trying to do in a much more direct way," she says.

While these videos may be empowering to teens, Project UROK also makes sure to direct users to professional help if and when they need it. It has a comprehensive resources page, curated based on helpfulness and whether the staff members, all of whom have experienced mental illness or knew someone who did, would use them.

There are also several psychologists on the nonprofit's board, and it works with the Children's Health Council, which is the same organization that helped Jaffe as a kid.

"We can't ourselves administer any treatment, but we can point them in the right direction," she says. "If we come across anyone we're concerned about, we have an order of operations in place for next steps. Keeping our users safe is our No. 1 priority."

For immediate help, contact the National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside the U.S., you can find the appropriate resources here.

We went Western last week for a duel between two talented stop-motion artists.

Since Viners Alicia Herber and Tee Ken Ng were in town, they stop by Mashable. Little did they know what we had in store for them.

As they walked in, we handed them cowboy hats with no explanation. We led them upstairs to our roof, and briefly explained the concept of our video: a speed Vine duel. Then we filmed their game faces.

Back in our Vine studio, we gave Ng and Herber a handful of random materials — patterned paper, Mashable poker chips, fish bowl gravel, sticky tack and scissors. With 30 minutes on the clock, they began crafting their animations.

Watch the video above to see how the duel went down.

Ng, a graphic designer based in Australia, specializes in "surreal and illusionistic" stop-motion. He's been on Vine since the app first launched.

"What got me hooked were the limitations Vine imposed on the recording process," he says. "It all had to be made in-app without uploading from your camera roll, which forced you to think creatively and then it became this epic challenge. The more time I spent with Vine seeing what others were doing with it, I quickly realized that it was developing into its own unique art form."

Herber's Vine followers know her as an artist who dabbles in different styles — food art, cats in costumes, hand-drawn animations. "I love unconventional materials and I'll try to figure out a way to animate with just about anything,".

Herber was also on Vine in the early days — back when there was no option to save drafts, use the ghost mode or lock the camera's focus.

"It was a bit trickier and a lot more stressful, but I liked that I couldn't obsess and finesse things," she said. "It was almost like a sketchbook back then."

Two years later, she's producing shorts for brands. Her profession overlapping with her passion is "like winning the happiness lottery," Herber says.

Whether you're moving into your first home or relocating to your second, there's a good chance you'll need outside financing to obtain it. According to the National Association of Realtors' 2014 Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends report, 88% of recent buyers financed their home purchase.
For Generation Y buyers, that figure is as high as 97%, according to the report.

As many home buyers have learned, the process of qualifying for a mortgage can be both tedious and nerve-wracking. Lenders seek to know everything about a potential borrower's past and current finances to ensure that he or she has the cash flow to make monthly mortgage payments.

Here are five ways borrowers can reduce their debt, increase their cash flow and achieve a low debt-to-income ratio before buying a home.

1. Prune away credit report inaccuracies

While you might not put much thought into old information on your credit report, such as an old address or a late payment from a decade ago, lenders do.
"Nothing is overly minute when it comes to making sure your credit score is current and accurate," says Michael Bovee, president of Consumer Recovery Network, a self-help website to resolve credit issues.

Appearances matter on your credit report, and multiple addresses can give off the impression that you're financially unstable. Bovee advises consumers to delete old addresses from their report. He also urges them to contact credit agencies about paid bills that are still showing on credit reports.

"Those shouldn't be there anymore, and they'll follow you around for years if you don't pay attention," Bovee says. "They can affect your score, how you're viewed and your interest rate."

Even if a potential borrower doesn't find any errors or discrepancies on his or her credit report, it's good for him or her to get in the habit of regularly checking its contents.

"It greases the wheels," Bovee says. "It'll get you accustomed to the process of making sure that everything on your credit score accurately reflects your current information."

2. Remove co-signed obligations

When preparing their finances before a home purchase, many consumers overlook obligations that they've co-signed in the past, such as a relative's credit card or a student loan. Though they may not make payments on those obligations, consumers are still responsible for them in the eyes of lenders, who view co-signed obligations as debt and a borrowing risk.

"It's all about what's on paper — just the facts," says Scott Sheldon, a senior loan officer at Sonoma County Mortgages.

Sometimes removing a name from a co-signed obligation can be as easy as placing a phone call, Sheldon says. In the end, removing outside responsibilities from a credit report can free up buyers to borrow more, he adds.

3. Attack large and high-interest balances and improve cash flow

Before approving you for a mortgage, lenders want to feel assured that your current debts won't impede you from making monthly payments on your home. One thing that makes lenders feel uneasy about your ability to make those payments is credit card debt.
To assuage future lenders, consumers should devise a monthly budget that allows them to pay down their credit cards to 30% or less of their credit limits. Not only will this tactic trim monthly payments on the card (which are likely subject to interest), it'll also refurbish the card holder's credit score and lower his or her debt-to-income ratio.

"It’s like a three-in-one punch," says Sheldon. "The borrower will have a better FICO score, a better DTI ratio and better ability to qualify for a home because less their income is mortgaged."
To get started on paying down credit cards, consumers should set aside money each month to whittle away at their cards that have higher interest rates and larger balances, Bovee advises
"You can take someone from zero to hero using their monthly cash flow in six to 12 months, if they have that time," Bovee says.

By attacking those balances, consumers will vastly improve their cash flow, which is central to a lender's decision.

"Us lenders don't care so much about the amount of debt someone has, per se," Sheldon says. "It's the minimum payments associated with that debt that draws the line in the sand between having good probability of qualifying and having a worse probability of qualifying."

"The person with more debt and lower monthly payments is actually better off from a loan qualifying standpoint than the person with less debt and a higher monthly payment," he adds.

4. Negotiate unresolved debt on your own

Though you may have outstanding debts that have gone to collection, you can still qualify for a mortgage in the future, especially if you take prudent steps to bandage debts and erase balances from your credit report.

To start the debt triage process, consumers should reach out to their creditors or collectors and offer to pay half of their sum — or, in some cases, less, Bovee advises.
The end goal, Bovee says, should be to remove all unpaid bills from a credit report and receive documentation that the cases have been closed. With a tidier credit report, creditors will be less skittish about lending to you.

"Because the damage is already done to your credit, you need to get the balances updated to show there's nothing owed," Bovee says.

"Then, that person with three collections on their report today, as long as they're able to put a plan together and enact it over the course of the next six months, could be in the home-buying market by winter."

5. Consolidate debt

If potential home buyers have multiple student loans or credit cards with significant debt on them, they should consider consolidating their debts. In the latter scenario, consumers can search for a zero or low-interest credit card that allows them to transfer their current obligations onto one card and close out multiple open balances.

"That'll have a ripple benefit effect," Sheldon says. "Those other cards will now show zero balance, which improves utilization of credit, and you'll have a lower monthly payment, which will bolster your ability to qualify for a mortgage."

Like Sheldon, Bovee stresses the importance of reducing your debt through traditional means, such as consolidation. He advises against alternative ways to slash debt like debt settlement or credit counseling, both of which can hurt your credit in the long run.

"Use peer-to-peer lending or banks that are back in the credit consolidation market," Bovee says.

For how to calculate your debt-to-income ratio, see this helpful video:

Think music festival and visions of mushrooms dance in your head.

It's far from shocking that some festival goers boost their musical experiences with substances. Drug emergencies even disrupt some events, such as New York's 2013 Electric Zoo, which was shut down early after two attendees died from overdoses.

The substance and addiction resource Drugabuse.com analyzed Instagram posts to find out which drugs people mentioned the most when referring to their favorite music festival. Over 3 million posts were analyzed.

For starters, the most Instagrammed music festival turned out to be Electric Daisy Carnival. Not surprisingly, EDC had the most posts mentioning substance abuse, too — over 40,000. And out of all the substance-related posts for Marley Fest, 82% included mentions of marijuana. MDMA was the most popular for EDC and Ultra, and cocaine for Coachella. And the before-mentioned Burning Man sees quite a bit of DMT.

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When the going gets tough, the tough go get a massage.

Life's little luxuries are what keep many of us refreshed and relaxed when the stressors of work and home leave us frazzled. From bottomless-mimosa brunch to a day at the spa, everybody needs a little pampering every now and then.

Indulging in such activities doesn't have to break the bank. Below are a few sites and services for bringing a little luxury into your life when you've got champagne taste and a beer budget.

You probably don't was Deadpool anywhere near your mom — or a baby for that matter.

Ryan Reynolds, who plays Marvel's antihero, tweeted out a very special Mother's Day message that comes straight from his character's heart. Or what passes for his character's heart.

Only a sarcastic, foul-mouthed mercenary like Deadpool could craft such poetic, honeyed words.

Ryan Reynolds' wife, Blake Lively, is also a proud mama this year. Lively and Reynolds welcomed a baby girl, James, in December.

You think you're so tough because your gun shoots bullets? Pfft. My gun shoots cars.

That's right. A creative Grand Theft Auto V mod making the rounds this week allows players to turn regular weapons into machines of vehicular murder.

View post on imgur.com

This trick works on any gun in the PC version of GTA V, and we're here to help you make that magic for yourself.

As Mon Mothma in Return of the Jedi might put it, many cars died to bring us this information ....

There are two key steps to setting this up. First you need Script Hook V, a handy little file that makes GTA V mod-ready. Download the latest version here, open up the ZIP archive, and copy the two DLL files — ScriptHookV.dll and dinput8.dll — from the "bin" folder to the root folder where you have the game installed.

If you play using Steam, the folder location probably looks something like this: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Grand Theft Auto V

One important note before you proceed:
Neither of the DLLs overwrite anything that's already in the folder, but Script Hook V breaks your ability to play GTA Online. Mods are cleared for use in the single player and "Director" modes, but developer Rockstar Games doesn't allow them to be used online.

Once you're done playing with mods, you'll need to delete the two files and reset the game before you can use GTA Online again.

Now that that's done, head over to the Vehicle Cannon download page on gta5-mods.com and download the mod. Open up the archive and copy the lone file you find there — vehicle cannon.asi — to the same folder you dropped Script Hook V into.

That's it! Fire up the game (remember to start it in single player), travel to whichever lovely vista you'd like to use as a backdrop for an apocalyptic number of car explosions and press the F11 key to activate the mod. Then just shoot any gun in your inventory and enjoy the fireworks.

You'll know the mod works if you see white text pop up in the top left corner of the screen after you hit F11 (though the flood of cars exploding out of your gun barrel is a dead giveaway as well). You can press F11 once for a "normal" rate of fire and a second time for a "fast," though we couldn't see much of a difference between the two.

Pressing F11 a third time turns the mod off, though you'll still need to remove Script Hook V if you want to get into GTA Online.

There are tons of other scripts (the type of mod that Script Hook V enables) on the gta5-mods website if you're feeling adventurous. A lot of them amount to cheats, but there are definitely some intriguing possibilities. Like the one that causes spontaneous chaos in the world. Or the one that turns you into a Jedi Master.

Let us know if you try any of these mods out and please, share videos!

Tech news has been busy this week, with Oculus finally confirming a release date and Google releasing the schedule for its upcoming developers conference. So you may have missed some of the week's best new apps.

Luckily, each weekend, we round up a few of our favorite new and updated apps. This week's list includes an app that lets you play classical music on a piano, a social app from the creator of the Sims and a weight-tracking app.

Check out the gallery, below, to see our top picks. If you're looking for more, take a look at our last roundup here.

Into the Circle

Into the Circle is one of those simple games that is trickier than it seems. The premise is somewhat like darts, in that you want to perfectly aim and time shots to make it into the circles, with extra points for landing in the center. But the speed and angles get progressively more difficult as the levels advance, which takes the games from simple to frustrating very quickly.
Keep an eye on: The circles in the distance. If you overshoot your next target, you can still continue provided you make it into a circle somewhere on the board.

Pro tip: If you run out of stars and want to get around the game’s somewhat maddening freemium constraints, kill the app and restart. It won’t save your previous progress, but it does allow you to start over without making an in-app purchase or clicking through the app’s ads.

iOS: free

Image: Gameblyr

Slim

The aim of Slim’s weight tracking app is to help you not only with daily tracking, but also with small game features like reminders and in-app rewards for meeting goals.

Keep an eye on: The app also supports Touch ID at login to ensure your data is kept private.

Pro tip: Apple Health integration allows you to automatically sync your weight from Wi-Fi-enabled scales like Fitbit’s or Withings’ with the Health app.

iOS: $0.99

Image: Josef Moser

Tastebud

Looking for new music and podcasts to listen to? New books to read? TV and movies to watch and apps to download? Tastebud users ask for recommendations and get suggestions from their extended social networks.

Keep an eye on: Your notifications to find out when people you know need a rec or when someone likes one of your suggestions.
Pro tip: You can customize your feed to filter out certain categories you’re not interested in.

iOS: free
Image: Josar Media Inc

Thred

Created by the man behind the Sims and SimCity games, Thred is a social app that’s a bit like Twitter cofounder Biz Stone’s Super. Users share brief stories by overlaying text and stickers onto images.

Keep an eye on: The featured section, which has some of the app’s more popular ideas. You can also switch to an “everyone” view to get a sense of what all users are sharing.

Pro tip: The app has a neat scroller control that helps you easily search through your camera roll chronologically to find photos on any given day.

iOS: free

Image: Syntertainment Incorporated

Touch Pianist

A simple but beautiful app, Touch Pianist takes classical music you’ve heard a million times and recreates it as a visualization that you “play” just by tapping on the screen in the right rhythm.

Keep an eye on: The app’s music catalog, which comes with more than a dozen songs preloaded for free. You can buy additional scores through in-app purchases.

Pro tip: Don’t be afraid to play too fast or too slow or mix up the beat a bit; the music holds up, regardless of your skill level. Tapping farther down on the screen decreases the volume while moving higher increases it.

iOS: free

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Are you tired of constantly cutting the cheese? Unsurprisingly, there's an app for this.

A little device called the CH4 is named after the chemical compound CH4, or methane, which is found in natural gas. Har har.

Funding for the fart-tracking wearable is underway on Kickstarter, where a pledge of $120 will get you one of these non-invasive little guys.

Brazilian graphic designer and wearables enthusiast Rodrigo Narciso is the brain behind the tiny 3D-printed tracker. He developed the idea for his Master's thesis in NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. The concept is simple: Correlate how much you fart to what you're eating.

"People are divided. Some love it and some think it’s just a joke/parody," he told Mashable.
Place the square in your back pocket or attach it to your belt and go about your day. The sensor will detect each time you fart and record it on what resembles a car's gas gauge. Then, on the associated app, enter your daily food intake; the CH4 will figure out which foods make you extra gassy, and can thus be avoided.

Petra Nemcova on the red carpet at the 67th Cannes Film Festival in 2014.

Image: Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP/Associated Press

CANNES, France — Grab your sunglasses and fancy shoes, but leave that selfie stick behind. It's time for the 68th Annual Festival de Cannes, the most spectacular, sensational and, yes, snootiest event in the international cinema calendar.

In an effort to keep this invitation-only event above the fray, festival big Thierry Frémaux has made it clear that red carpet social media snaps are a faux pas. They don't just slow down proceedings, they are “ridiculous and grotesque.” It's that level of 'tude, and the danger of those notorious boos, that gets filmmakers into a froth about debuting here.

While Cannes films don't necessarily make a killing at the box office, their impact is felt in other ways. The work inspires other filmmakers, influences fashion and gets tongues wagging. But for true movie lovers, these 11 days in the South of France are nirvana. If you include the International Critics' Week, Directors' Fortnight and Cannes Classics sidebars, close to 100 features will unspool.

Some of which are on the beach, under the stars! Here are some titles we've got eyes on this year:

Project UROK teaches teens how to talk about anxiety and mental illness

What 'mental illness' really means

Acceptance of mental health

World-class stop-motion animators compete in the ultimate Vine duel

5 ways to reduce your debt before buying a home

1. Prune away credit report inaccuracies

2. Remove co-signed obligations

3. Attack large and high-interest balances and improve cash flow

4. Negotiate unresolved debt on your own

5. Consolidate debt

Which drugs people talk about at the 15 hottest music festivals

How to enjoy life's little luxuries for less

A Mother's Day message from Ryan Reynolds and Deadpool

How to make 'Grand Theft Auto V' guns shoot cars instead of bullets

5 can't-miss apps: Touch Pianist, Thred and more

Into the Circle

Slim

Tastebud

Thred

Touch Pianist

A fart-tracking Kickstarter wants you to stop cutting the cheese

5 hot titles from Cannes, where red-carpet selfies are considered 'grotesque'

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