Boing Boing

You know we’re in for a fun week with the tabloids when the National Enquirer cover on “America’s Worst Sex Abuse Churches,” along with its handy guide – “Is Your Priest a Pervert?” – is topped by the banner: “Flip Over The Cover For 5 More Exclusives!” You turn the page with eager anticipation, and find . . . an ad for a walk-in bathtub. Perhaps the deception is designed to make you feel dirty, boosting sales for the tub?It’s a bait-and-switch tactic that seems to embody this week’s tabloid offerings.“Dying Perv Cosby Begs for New Kidney!” proclaims an Enquirer story about newly incarcerated sex offender Bill Cosby. Wouldn’t you think his defense attorneys might have mentioned this at his sentencing? Especially since his daughter Ensa died at 44 from renal disease in February. An unnamed source claims that Cosby refuses to have kidney transplant surgery at the hospital because “he’s convinced the hospital staff will sedate him, steal his organs and then sell them to settle up his unpaid legal bills.” Right. Because transplant surgeons are begging for organs from 81-year-old donors, and routinely offer their services to lawyers to recover debts.The British Royal Family continues to be an easy tabloid target, famed for its reluctance to sue for libel. "Queen Destroys Diana Murder Evidence – To Prevent Charles’ Arrest,” reports the National Examiner. That explains everything! Criminal mastermind Elizabeth “concocted a massive cover-up” after “conniving love rat” Charles “confessed to masterminding the murder of his ex-wife.” "She ordered MI6 agents to impound Diana’s death car, destroy damning tissue samples and do everything to hide the truth.” Right. Read the rest

Science fiction author, librettist, singer and historian Ada Palmer (previously), science and piracy historian Adrian Johns, and I have teamed up to create a seminar series at the University of Chicago called Censorship and Information Control During Information Revolutions, which compares and contrasts the censorship regimes and moral panics that flourished after the invention of the printing press with modern, computerized efforts to control and suppress information.We're putting on seven free, public seminars at the University of Chicago, with guest lecturers from a variety of disciplines, drawn from diverse institutions including the American Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and from diverse specializations including colonial censorship in occupied Korea under Japanese rule, the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, contemporary state document redaction, and the literary consequences of colonialism in Sri Lanka (to name just a few).We're also putting on an exhibition at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Library, displaying censored materials selected and analyzed by a team of over 30 student researchers. Though the seminars and exhibition are fully funded, we're kickstarting a fund to pay for professional videography to produce accessible, subtitled, professional videos of the seminars and a catalog of the exhibition. We're looking to raise $5800. Premiums include printed copies of the catalog, a set of documents for you to expurgate at home (!), a redaction of your name in the official thank you page, autographed copies of the catalog, a personalized, autographed copy of one of Ada's or my novels, the ability to submit a question to the seminar, and chats with Ada, me, or one of several of our expert lecturers -- or, at the $400 level, you get a personalized tour of the exhibition with Ada. Read the rest

In 1769, a Peruvian noblewoman set out with 41 companions to join her husband in French Guiana. But a series of terrible misfortunes left her alone in the Amazon jungle. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow Isabel Godin des Odonais on her harrowing adventure in the rain forest.We'll also learn where in the world "prices slippery traps" is and puzzle over an airport's ingenuity.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

This is Kiko the cat. Her human companion, Leah Piercey of Newfoundland, Canada, has just learned that Kiko enjoys getting her rump massaged by a severed, mechanical crawling Halloween hand. Hilarious? Or confirmation that cats don't actually need us?(Tastefully Offensive) Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Young Brett Kavanaugh attends Yale and continues his charmingly roguish antics, with the help of Donald J. Trump.

I love the Punkt MP01, a basic candybar-style cellphone whose few features are polished to perfection. But it has a big drawback: as a 2G device, it's effectively locked to T-Mobile in the U.S. and coverage is getting patchy. Enter the Punkt MP02, a 4G version with some other interesting upgrades: it's also a WiFi hotspot, it's the only non-BlackBerry handset to come with BlackBerry Secure Software, and it runs a customized version of Android, cut to the device's monochrome and minimalist design requirements. It'll be $349 when released, though, so you are certainly paying for your less-is-more. Read the rest

I am super happy with these low-carb but high-fat Butter Pecan Cookies.I went to Los Angeles a few months ago, and was body shamed. Body shaming assholes are flaming assholes, but the flaming asshole was right and I needed to lose some weight.Sigh.I went back to eating a super low-carb diet. It has worked for me many, many times. When I was in the best shape of my life, I was eating low-carb and training for marathons. I like low-carb diets.I also like cookies.Cookies are mostly flour, sugar and butter. Butter was no problem. Flour, I figured they are nut cookies, use a nut flour, right? While it seems antithetical to by-pass PECAN FLOUR in a Butter Pecan cookie, I found that pecan flour was too carb-rich, too calorie-rich and most-importantly-of-all had a strangely dilutive effect on the toasted pecan flavor. I think Butter Pecan cookies need to distinctly taste like butter and pecans.Turns out the far more readily available almond flour was the one for me. Easily found at most super markets, I have tried both the Trader Joe's brand Almond Flour and the Bob's Red Mill. While I always have a penchant for Oregon's finest things, I can discern absolutely no difference between the two.Replacing sugar was a pain in the ass. I did a lot of research, and then I talked to my fellow Boing Boing editor, and cookie eating pal, Xeni. I tried sweeteners with erythritol and xylitol. Not good. Read the rest

Here are soccer legend Pelé, comedy actor Don Knotts, and since-disgraced baseball hit king Pete Rose pitching the Atari Video Computer System in 1978. "Don't just watch television tonight - play it!" Read the rest

Big Tech companies -- like all the apex predators of all the world's concentrated industries -- is swimming in cash; but unlike those other firms, Big Tech is not using the cash merely for financial engineering; it's doing actual engineering, sinking $80B this year into capital expenditures that will form a wall around the industry's incumbents, which new firms will have to scale in order to challenge them.The new equipment includes robotic manufacturing plants, huge data-centers, undersea data-cables, and other infrastructure that might have been provided by a patchwork of service firms in an earlier era.The focus on infrastructure spending is a mixed bag: owning tech infrastructure is always a gamble, betting that it won't go obsolete before the owners have finished amortizing its purchase; if there are major breakthroughs in any of these technologies, new companies can avail themselves of them without having to take a painful write-down on last-generation tools.And of course, infrastructure spending does not contribute to inequality the way stock buybacks do. But Google parent Alphabet Inc. and the other four dominant U.S. technology companies—Apple, Amazon​.com, Microsoft, and Facebook—are fast becoming industrial giants. They spent a combined $80 billion in the last year on big-ticket physical assets, including manufacturing equipment and specialized tools for assembling iPhones and the powerful computers and undersea internet cables Facebook needs to fire up Instagram videos in a flash. Thanks to this surge in spending—up from $40 billion in 2015—they’ve joined the ranks of automakers, telephone companies, and oil drillers as the country’s biggest spenders on capital goods, items including factories, heavy equipment, and real estate that are considered long-term investments. Read the rest

Behold the personification of a ritalin pill and an anxiety attack. Sports Illustrated reports on Gritty, the Philadephia Flyers' new mascot.Philadelphia Flyers fans were in for a bit of a shock today: the Pennsylvania hockey team unveiled their new official mascot to the public. His name is Gritty. He looks like a rejected Muppet creation, a Where the Wild Things Are misfit or a stuffed animal gone seriously, terrifyingly rogue. He’s a bright orange, furry creature of bizarre design.This video clip shows Gritty's introduction to a group of children. The screams/cheers ratio is worthy of note. Read the rest

At a recent West Hollywood City Council meeting, a couple of guys from San Clemente had some sweet words in defense of Bird Scooters. Now, Chad Kroeger and JT Parr are no strangers to city council meetings. You may remember when they fought for their right to (house) party. A quick scan of their YouTube page reveals that they've since appeared at other council meetings and been guests on the Howard Stern Show twice.Gentlemen, respect. I'm dying over here. How do you keep a straight face when you deliver your statements?(swissmiss) Read the rest

Sasha Shulgin died in 2014 after a lifetime as a psychedelic pioneer and brilliant chemist, but the books he and his wife Ann Shulgin authored were just as radical as the lab work. Commemorative editions of PiHKAL and TiHKAL are about to be released and you can get them signed by Ann and a dozen other luminaries of the psychedelic world next month in Berkeley.Sasha Shulgin, inventor (in his lab in Lafayette) of literally 90+% of the known psychedelic compounds we enjoy today, and his wife Ann, wrote books Phenethylamines I have Known And Loved (PIHKAL) and Tryptamines I have Known And Loved (TIHKAL). The new commemorative edition of them has hundreds of candid photos (from Sasha as a boy to Ann & Sasha's courtship to photos of testing compounds, orange seventies couch and all) and a couple dozen essays from friends and colleagues. We're having a release party on 8 October at Moe's Books, and I hope to rock Ann's world with all the love from all the merry freaks whose lives they've improved over the years. It'll be an unusual opportunity to get the autograph of many of those luminaries all in one place, and Jon Hanna and David Presti will be speaking, as well as Ann, and we'll have a roundtable discussion with the contributors. Probably right up your alley and hopefully that of your readers as well.Starts 7 p.m. until 10 p.m., Oct 8., at Moe's Books on Telegraph Ave.Press release: Psychedelic Chemistry Cookbooks Reissued In Stunning Boxed Set Read the rest

Facebook's terms of service require users to use their real names; though thiis has lots of potential downsides (including allowing dictators to identify and round up opposition figures), you'd hope that it would at least be evenly applied -- for example, to law enforcement agencies like the Memphis Police Department, who use "Bob Smith" accounts to befriend and entrap activists online.US law enforcement makes quite a habit out of this kind of thing, and many forces have admitted in court to using fake Facebook identities to target suspects. Cops even get legal advice telling them this is OK, even though it violates Facebook's terms of service.The ACLU uncovered evidence of the fake Memphis PD accounts in the course of a civil rights lawsuit. EFF got the Memphis cops' Facebook accounts terminated after the news broke, and Facebook's lawyers sent a C&D to the Memphis cops telling them to end the practice.EFF's been chasing Facebook on this for four years, since the DEA was revealed to be using fake Facebook accounts in its investigations. After the Memphis incident, Facebook updated its law enforcement policies to make it clear that this conduct is not permissible.But as EFF's Dave Maass points out, Facebook users get lifetime bans for creating fake accounts. Shouldn't police departments that break the rules get equal justice?The presenter told the audience: “Police and Federal law enforcement may create a fake Facebook profile as part of an investigation and even though it violates the terms and policies of Facebook the evidence may still be used in court.”The question remains: what action should Facebook take when law enforcement intentionally violates the rules? Read the rest

Facebook usage is falling in the US and Canada, especially among young people, but it's still dominating the internet overseas, especially in countries where Zero Rating is legal.In those countries, Facebook -- more than any other technology, platform or service -- is leading the rise in authoritarianism and genocide. It's become the go-to tool for manipulating public opinion to support violence, racial cleansing and other horrors.In his latest piece, John Oliver describes how Facebook's business model, moderation tactics, and history have led to this moment -- and how Facebook has become an irredeemable cesspool, an insult to toilets, because toilets "make shit go away, whereas Facebook retains shit, disseminates shit to your acquaintances, and reminds you of shit from seven years ago while allowing corporations to put their shit in front of you. What I’m saying is there’s a purity and integrity to toilets that Facebook seriously lacks." An August investigation by Motherboard gets a shout-out in the piece, as Oliver references one of Facebook’s many internal content moderation rules—in this case, one that specifies the very specific instances in which photoshopped anuses are allowed on the site. Facebook has similar rules for hate speech (drawing the line on what’s allowed and what isn’t in often difficult ways to understand), which cut across cultures, countries, political regimes, and geographic borders.“I am not saying the challenges Facebook is facing are not significant. But for a company that moves fast and breaks things, they have sure moved slowly in trying to fucking fix them,” Oliver said. Read the rest

Redditor Ch8s3 created this custom game controller by creating a new case, seating the mainboard in it and soldering new LEDs on, then swapping out the buttons for dremeled-out shell-cases from a Luger 9MM, a Remington 20, and a 12 gauge Hornady 50 caliber. It's beautiful work. Read the rest

McDonald's workers in ten US cities staged a mass walkout last week, demanding that the company take action on the rampant sexual abuse and harassment in its franchisees' stores; as the workers pointed out, the company surveils and controls their every move on-shift down to the minutest detail, but can't seem to find any way to chase down reports that women are being groped and then fired if they refuse to perform sexual acts on their supervisors. What's more, the National Labor Relations Board has already held that McDonald's has a duty to look after the workers in its franchisees' stores (and some of the harassment has taken place in stores owned by McDonald's corporate itself).The walkout was coordinated with Fight For 15, a workers' rights campaign that was started to focus on purely economic issues (a $15 minimum wage) but whose remit is broadening to include all questions of workplace justice, including harassment of low-waged workers.As an excellent segment on this week's On the Media discusses, the McDonald's walkout is a new phase in the #MeToo story, whose highest-profile beats have focused on the workplace harassment of famous and powerful women, not sub-minimum-wage women working at fast-food restaurants.The wider focus on workplace justice has hit a nerve: the organizers who coordinated the walkout have found common cause with each other and the workers they inspired and have vowed to stay together. In the meantime, the labor action has highlighted the need for a union of McDonald's workers, which could organize the workers at the world's second-largest employer. Read the rest

Sipping on whiskey is already a sophisticated experience, but that doesn't mean you can't kick it up a notch. A perfect addition to your desk or home bar, the Eravino Whiskey Globe Decanter features a beautifully etched map on the surface and an eye-catching glass ship inside, bringing an entirely new level of class to your top shelf drinks. You can get it on sale today for $24.99.This decanter can store up to 30 ounces of bourbon, whiskey, scotch, vodka or other spirits inside and comes with a tight-fitting glass knob to maintain freshness. The decanter makes for an impressive sight as your spirit's waves crash against the glass ship inside when you pour a drink, and you can easily place it anywhere thanks to the included hardwood stand.The Eravino Whiskey Globe Decanter retails for $55.99, but you can get it on sale today for $24.99 in the Boing Boing Store. Read the rest

When Vancouver tech retailer NCIX went bankrupt, it stopped paying its bills, including the bills for the storage where its servers were being kept; that led to the servers being auctioned off without being wiped first, containing sensitive data -- addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, passwords, etc -- for thousands of customers. Also on the servers: tax and payroll information for the company's employees.In August, security researcher Travis Doering of Privacy Fly found NCIX servers being sold off on Craigslist; the seller, described as "an Asian man from Richmond" who called himself "Jeff," said he bought many NCIX servers and computers, as well as hundreds of hard-drives with sensitive company data on them. Doering verified that Jeff's servers held hundreds of thousands of credit-card numbers and millions of customer orders, as well as a backup image of the personal computer of NCIX founder Steve Wu.Jeff told Doering that he had already sold copies of some of NCIX's internal data to another customer, and offered to let Doering buy the right to copy the hard-drives on NCIX's systems, rather than the systems themselves.NCIX appears not to have encrypted any of its systems.The examination portion of the meeting began to wind-down as time flew by and Jeff jumped into brokering a deal over a cup of tea. The first offer was thirty-five thousand dollars which would allow me to purchase all the desktop’s and server hardware, excluding one group of hard drives that I had analyzed which he would allow me to copy. Read the rest

"Do you remember the 21st night of September?" Happy 40th anniversary to Earth, Wind & Fire's "September," which was actually released on November 18, 1978. What's the significance of September 21 in the lyrics? Well, none."We went through all the dates: 'Do you remember the first, the second, the third, the fourth ... ' and the one that just felt the best was the 21st," co-writer Allee Willis told NPR in 2014. "I constantly have people coming up to me and they get so excited to know what the significance was. And there is no significance beyond it just sang better than any of the other dates. So ... sorry!" Do you remember? 🤔— Earth, Wind & Fire (@EarthWindFire) September 21, 2018 Read the rest

If a Bob Ross TOASTER isn't gloriously leaping over the "officially-licensed Bob Ross merchandise shark" with red, white, and blue streamers, I don't know what is! Don't get me wrong, I love every inch of its modern-day kitsch aesthetic. From Bob's smiling mug and signature on the toaster's front to the feature that actually chars an image of the late great Joy of Painting host on the bread itself, fro and all. It's truly something to behold. But I can't help but feel sad that Mr. Ross himself wasn't around to experience his fantastic late-capitalism legacy. It's touted as, "The perfect present to cheer up any artist's kitchen." You can get one for the artist in your life for $39.95.(Foodiggity, Odditymall) Read the rest

Absolutely stellar work by comic artist and "animotion" director Dmitry "Ahriman" Grozov of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Follow Ahriman on Patreon and Instagram. Read the rest

Jordan Peterson, the Jungian psychologist, vaguely Gorean guru of the "masculine spirit" and crusader against political correctness, has threatened to sue author Kate Manne and Vox.com over an interview where she described portions of his book as sexist.Manne is an author and Cornell University assistant professor. Howard Levitt, Peterson's lawyer, demanded that the interview, posted as "A feminist philosopher makes the case against Jordan Peterson", be removed from the internet. Irin Carmon reports:Among the statements Levitt objected to: Manne’s contention that Peterson’s book included “some really eyebrow-raising, authoritarian-sounding, and even cruel things,” as well as her observation that “it doesn’t seem accidental that [Peterson’s] skepticism about objective facts arises when it’s conveniently anti-feminist.” The lawyer and his client were equally unhappy with this line: “I also suspect that for many of Peterson’s readers, the sexism on display above is one tool among many to make forceful, domineering moves that are typical of misogyny.”I haven't read the book Manne discussed, but among the other things Peterson is famous for is suggesting that women who wear makeup to work are hypocrites if they then complain about sexual harassment. He works, in this respect, as a gooey strand of connective tissue between the superficies of academia and the little feminine things that enrage weak men everday.Vox has no plans to remove its interview with Manne.Vox’s Sean Illing wrote that he interviewed Manne precisely because she, “unlike many Peterson critics, actively engaged with his ideas.” Says Illing of Peterson’s saber-rattling, “I found the request absurd and forwarded it to our legal advisers, who confirmed that it was baseless, and then I happily ignored it. Read the rest

Ed Whelan, the president of a conservative think tank and a former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, has been promising a silver-bullet exoneration of Brett Kavanaugh, the alleged drunken teen sex pest, all week long.Kavanaugh was all set to sail into the Supreme Court until Dr. Christine Ford, a California psychologist, accused him of trying to rape her at a house party in the early 1980s, when she was 15 and he 17. Whelan's shot finally came this evening in the form of a tweetstorm that suggests a Kavanaugh classmate and supposed lookalike was the attacker Ford describes.His theory is reproduced below. It's absolutely batshit. (Whelan has doxxed foolishly in the past and had to apologize accordingly for such "uncharitable conduct".) [UPDATE 2: Whelan has apologized accordingly: "I made an appalling and inexcusable mistake of judgment in posting the tweet thread in a way that identified Kavanaugh's Georgetown Prep classmate. I take full responsibility for that mistake, and I deeply apologize for it. I realize that does not undo the mistake."]I made an appalling and inexcusable mistake of judgment in posting the tweet thread in a way that identified Kavanaugh's Georgetown Prep classmate. I take full responsibility for that mistake, and I deeply apologize for it. I realize that does not undo the mistake.— Ed Whelan (@EdWhelanEPPC) September 21, 2018[UPDATE 1: Ford denies Whelan's accusation: “I knew them both, and socialized with” them, Ford said, adding that she had once visited the other classmate in the hospital. Read the rest

Former Republican political operative David Brock has since turned on the right, but he once famously trashed Anita Hill's reputation to help ensure Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Paste Magazine's Shane Ryan noticed that in his 2002 memoir, Blinded By the Right, he detailed this moment in 1997: As I arrived at the house, which was decked out in an oversized southwestern motif more appropriate for a bachelor’s mountain hideaway, the network cameras were coming on. When I saw one of Ken Starr’s deputies, Brett Kavanaugh, who was sitting across from me, mouth the word “bitch” when the camera panned to Hillary, I excused myself and sat in the darkened pine-scented dining room alone, smoking.There's an idea that everything liberals and the left thinks disqualifies Kavanaugh — especially being a blackout-drunk teenage sex predator — only makes him more popular among conservatives and the right. This quote fits that idea so perfectly it could hardly be more on-the-nose. Read the rest

Lightning cables typically fray at the ends causing the wire to break. I wish Apple used plain old microUSB cables, because I have about 100 of them for other devices and they seem to last longer than Lightning cables. Instead, I have to constantly buy replacement Lightning cables. These Lightning cables have connecters at right-angles to the cable, which might reduce the wear and tear. The cables themselves are braided, too, for additional robustness. They are MFi Certified. Read the rest

In 2013, Deputy Luis Ortiz was the "school resource officer" at Etiwanda Intermediate in San Bernardino County, California, when he arrested a group of 12- and 13-year-old girls, cuffing them and taking them to jail in a police vehicle; at the time and afterward, Ortiz said he arrested them "to prove a point" because he felt they were "unresponsive and disrespectful" and in his belief, introducing them to the criminal justice system would make them "mature a lot faster."The girls had been involved in "ongoing incidents of bullying and fighting." Ortiz had been called in to "mediate the conflict." When he decided he couldn't tell who the victims were and who the bullies were, he arrested all of them, "within minutes."Ortiz is the subject of lawsuits over his conduct, and he has been seeking to use "qualified immunity" (which protects individual officers from civil liability for actions taken in the course of their duties) to escape the suit.The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court just told him to go fuck himself. The lawsuits will continue. At the time of the students’ arrest, it was clearly established that a police seizure at the behest of school officials must, at a minimum, be “reasonably related to its purpose, and must not be ‘excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.’” Defendants do not—and indeed, cannot—meaningfully contest Deputy Ortiz’s motivation for the arrests, which he stated multiple times. No reasonable officer could have reasonably believed that the law authorizes the arrest of a group of middle schoolers in order to prove a point. Read the rest

Last week's catastrophic EU vote to censor and surveil the whole internet to catch copyright infringers isn't a local affair; the same corporations who were willing to sacrifice the internet to eke out a few percentage point gains in licensing revenue are busily at work in Canada, where a rewrite of copyright laws is underway. (more…)

A week ago, Apple announced a redesigned smartwatch that could track heart data, run EKGs, and even detect atrial fibrillation, promising that it would save lives. Today, one of America's biggest insurers killed its traditional life insurance policies, replacing them with "interactive" insurance that encourages users to use such devices and share the data with them to get perks. (more…)

NPR reporters poked around in Maria Butina's social media world, looking at the accused Russian agent's thousands of social media friends and reaching out to over 200 individuals. The resulting investigative report paints a portrait of Butina's life, from Siberia, to the tight-knit Moscow pro-guns shooting community, to D.C, Las Vegas, Washington state, and South Dakota. (more…)

I'd hate to see the ones that didn't quite, ahem, make the grade.

From Wired: "Dialect coach Erik Singer once again analyzes the accents of some of Hollywood's biggest names. How accurate were their accents, really?"He looks at Margot Robbie's Pacific Northwest accent in I, Tonya ("fantastic"), Giancarlo Esposito's Chilean/Mexican accent in Better Call Saul ("entirely appropriate"), Jennifer Lawrence's Russian accent in Red Sparrow ("doesn't fully cohere"), and 25 other actors' attempts at accents.

Real or not, the Loch Ness Monster brings in $54 million to the Scottish economy each year, an increase of $14.4 million from four years ago. The data comes from accountant Gary Campbell who also happens to be the official keeper of the Nessie sightings register. From the UK Press and Journal:

Before Thomas Borgen was CEO of Danske Bank, he ran the bank's Estonian branch from 2009-2013, presiding over years of neglect of basic, commonsense money-laundering controls, allowing more than €200B to flow through the bank from well-known financial secrecy jurisdictions like the British Virgin Islands, as well as Russia. (more…)

"Porn for women" was Pornhub's "top trending" search term for 2017; across the pornosphere, the number of women viewers continues its meteoric rise and rise, up to 25% now -- for the porn industry woman viewers represent a huge opportunity for growth. (more…)

People with certain types of baldness might be able to sniff their way back to a head of hair. In a study that was published in Nature Communications, researchers found that the scent of synthetic sandalwood, found in perfumes and cosmetics, can stimulate hair growth.According to Inverse:

When three masked burglars tear through a betting office in Ireland, threatening people with hammers and a sawed off shotgun, an 85-year-old great grandfather comes to the rescue. Watch how he fearlessly tackles one of them, and then chases them out with a chair. When it was all over he refused to be interviewed, preferring to spend his morning playing pitch and putt.Via BBC

Cage diving operator Calypso Star Charters or Port Lincoln, South Australia posted this startling photo of Satan disguised as a great white shark. (@calypsocharters)

Clever and wonderfully-presented: The Incredible Palindromic Hat-Trick. You may be unimpressed if you feed it small numbers. Feed it big ones!

Apparently, you are looking at the President's penis. (more…)

“We’re working on new ways to give you more control over your timeline,” Twitter Support tweeted tonight (during the Emmys live broadcast). (more…)

PACER (previously) is a paywall that charges you every time you look up the US's public domain Federal court records; for years, activists have railed against its existence, liberating key documents from it and putting them online for free, calling on Congress to eliminate it altogether. (more…)

Angry that cave rescuer Vernon Unsworth mad fun of his ridiculous rescue submarine, Elon Musk called him a "pedo" and, later, a "child rapist," then dared him to sue over the remarks. Unsworth has filed his lawsuit.

It's been 54 years since Mary Poppins hit the big screen, and now Walt Disney Studios is releasing its sequel, Mary Poppins Returns. Directed by Rob Marshall, Mary Poppins will be played by Emily Blunt, and although I can't imagine anyone but Julie Andrews playing the part, by the looks of the trailer Blunt looks like she does a practically perfect job. Other actors include Meryl Streep (Mary's eccentric cousin), Colin Firth, Angela Lansbury, and most exciting of all, Dick Van Dyke (Mr. Dawes' son).The plot is nicely summarized by i09:

Donald Trump, Jr. thinks that allegations of sexual assault against Judge Brett Kavanaugh is "nonsense." He also thinks that a woman accusing Kavanaugh of attempted rape is joke-worthy material. Rather than investigate to see if Kavanaugh is fit to serve the Supreme Court Justice, he ignorantly posts his knee-jerk juvenile reaction to the allegations on Instagram titled, "Judge Kavanaugh sexual assault letter found by Dems..." Along with a drawing in crayon that says, "Hi Cindy will you be my girlfriend?" with "yes" and "no" checkboxes, he writes, "Oh boy... the Dems and their usual nonsense games really have him on the ropes now. Finestein [sic] had the letter in July and saved it for the eve of his vote... honorable as always. I believe this is a copy for full transparency." View this post on Instagram Oh boy... the Dems and their usual nonsense games really have him on the ropes now. Finestein had the letter in July and saved it for the eve of his vote... honorable as always. I believe this is a copy for full transparency. 🤣🇺🇸🤣🇺🇸🤣 #politics #maga A post shared by Donald Trump Jr. (@donaldjtrumpjr) on Sep 15, 2018 at 12:30pm PDT Kavanaugh has denied pinning down a 15-year-old girl when he was 17 years old and covering her mouth while trying to undress her, although the woman who is accusing him, Professor Christine Blasey Ford, has passed a lie detector test about the allegations.Via CBS NewsImage: DonkeyHotey/Flickr

Our European immigrant ancestors did an unspeakable number of shitty things to North America's Indigenous peoples. Massacres, rapes, pillaging and residential schools designed to destroy their culture – we ticked off all of the genocidal boxes. Take a visit to a nearby reservation and you'll find that the legacy of our white asshole doings still echo on today. Amidst the systematic racism and down-home bigotry that many natives in the United States and Canada are still putting up with, federal and local government officials are doing what they can to make amends for the atrocities of the past. Issuing an official apology for the indignities, pain and death visited upon those forced into Canada's residential school system is a good example of this. However, not every gesture needs to be as grand in scope: inclusion, education and acceptance of indigenous cultures that were, for generations, forced outside of the mainstream, can go a long way towards healing the wounds of the past on a local level. To help move things along in this area, Professor Onowa McIvor of the University of Victoria's Department of Indigenous Education has put together a collection of words, greetings other and phrases in the languages of British Columbia's Indigenous peoples that can be incorporated into our day-to-day lives.From The CBC:Learning how to say "hello" or displaying a welcome sign in the language of the local First Nation are just a few ways the author is encouraging people to get involved."To learn a greeting but also the appropriate response is a way of deepening our understanding of that language a little bit, and being able to have just a very short conversation," McIvor told On The Island host Gregor Craigie."A greeting and a response is a way of beginning to learn the Indigenous language of the territory that you're in."According to the CBC, McIvor's goal in creating the list was to provide a starting point for communities to gain a better understanding of the local Indigenous peoples whose lands their towns and cities are built upon. Hopefully, its an idea that spreads to other areas as well.Image by Internet Archive Book Images - https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/19175400218/Source book page: https://archive.org/stream/annualreportofbu1018881889smit/#page/n491/mode/1up, No restrictions, Link

Coca-Cola is reportedly talking with Canadian marijuana producer Aurora Cannabis Inc. about CBD-infused beverages. “We are closely watching the growth of non-psychoactive CBD as an ingredient in functional wellness beverages around the world,” Coca-Cola spokesman Kent Landers told Bloomberg News. (Of course, Coca-Cola was also a pioneer in marketing psychoactive drug-infused beverages.)From Bloomberg:Aurora’s shares surged on the news, jumping as much as 23 percent Monday in New York to $8. Other stocks in the cannabis industry got a boost, with Tilray Inc. adding as much as 9.4 percent in response to Coca-Cola’s interest...The discussions with Aurora are focused on CBD-infused drinks to ease inflammation, pain and cramping, according to the BNN Bloomberg report. CBD, or cannabidiol, is the chemical in the pot plant often used for medicinal purposes, and doesn’t produce the high that comes from THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol. There are no guarantees of any deal between Aurora and Coca-Cola, according to the report.

Fill a plastic soda bottle with ground meat, attach a plastic plumbing elbow, and start squeezing your way to kebab heaven.this life hack rules pic.twitter.com/OE0NDfpoMB— an actual dog🌹 (@devtesla) September 16, 2018

Right now I'm listening to a mix of coffee shop chatter and tweeting birds. I'm using a website called A Soft Murmur, which lets you create an ambient mix of rain, thunder, waves, wind, fire, birds, crickets, coffee shop, singing bowl, and white noise. You can save your favorite mixes, too, or click a button for a random mix.[via Nag on the Lake]

In August 2017, the powerful public radio star John Hockenberry mysteriously left his job as host of “The Takeaway,” abandoning millions of listeners on hundreds of stations. A few months later, the reasons became clear: he was accused of creepy sexual propositions, complaints from co-hosts, ass-touching, grabbing and kissing producers and other women colleagues, and bullying, racist and sexist remarks. He admitted his behavior was "not always appropriate," laid low for a few months, and is now back with a lavishly self-pitying 7,000-word cover story in Harper's about his "exile" and how terrible it's all been for him.Do I dare make a spirited defense of something once called romance from the darkness of this exile, at a nadir of my personal credibility, at a moment when all of civilization seems to be in turmoil, over what is a plausible narrative of male/female attraction? Not only do I dare, knowing what righteous anger is out there, I really believe I have no choice. Ah yes, romance. Here's Hockenberry's idea of romance:The vacant seat was filled, for about four months, by African-American journalist Farai Chideya. Initially Hockenberry was friendly, she said, but when it seemed like she might become a regular, he “got nastier.” One day, after a story meeting in which Hockenberry became argumentative, she said, he called her into his office. “You shouldn’t stay here just as a ‘diversity hire,’” he told her, according to Chideya. “And you should go lose weight.” Even The New York Times' Michelle Goldberg, trying to conjure up sympathy, is having none of that: "Reading Hockenberry’s essay, it hit me: I feel sorry for a lot of these men, but I don’t think they feel sorry for women, or think about women’s experience much at all."...the most frustrating parts of “Exile” are where he casts himself as the victim of the women who spoke out against him.“Only one of my accusers reached out or responded to my heartfelt queries,” he writes. (Why would they?) Elsewhere he describes his children’s experience of his disgrace as a “pain I wish on no one, not even my accusers.” He invokes his children repeatedly, furious at the toll the scandal is taking on them. Maybe he behaved offensively toward women, he allows, but asks, “Is a life sentence of unemployment without possibility of furlough, the suffering of my children, and financial ruin an appropriate consequence?”Luckily, his unemployment isn’t total; he is writing for a major magazine after enduring nine months of obscurity. But in the nearly 7,000 words of his essay, as he demands that we consider his misery and embarrassment, he never really grapples with the misery and embarrassment he caused, never thinks deeply about how he affected the lives of the women who changed jobs to escape his advances.What Hockenberry's Harper's piece shows is not that he was too severely-punished. It shows that he was not punished at all beyond a fleeting unpopularity and an imposed sabbatical at the threshold of retirement age, free to enjoy dinners with friends constantly flattering him as the victim of revolutionary tyranny.For a time the only employment I could contemplate was detailed on an email list seeking disabled senior citizens to be greeters at Walmart stores in Utah and Georgia.What a vain and revolting man. What has he offered in restitution to his victims? Illo: Rob. Photo: Shutterstock