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Two trees in a fancy neighbourhood in Bristol, UK have had strips of anti-bird spikes nailed to their branches, rendering them "literally uninhabitable" by local wildlife, according to local Green Party councillor Paula O'Rourke. (more…)

The National Institutes of Health has lifted a moratorium on scientists mucking around with dangerous infectious disease. Government run review panels will protect us. What could go wrong?The New York Times article shares a number of not exactly concern-reducing quotes from scientists interviewed about this "small step forward." Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, reassures us with statements like: "If someone finds a way to make the Ebola virus more dangerous, I don’t believe that should be available to anybody off the street who could use it for nefarious purposes," and "Physicists long ago learned to distinguish between what can be publicly available and what’s classified." Great.The value of this research to people who don't want to kill millions is made to seem negligible, in the article, as well.

When a boy 9-year-old boy comes home from school down in the dumps because the classroom frog died, his sister has the perfect antidote: surprise tickets for the same night from the "North Pole" to see Lady Gaga. Having dinner at a restaurant, she reveals the surprise. The boy – and his reaction – are just too cute!Reveal pic.twitter.com/ElbgNeG1H7— BB•❄️🐝 (@runs_w_woIves) December 15, 2017Via Mashable

Only a few minutes remain on this deal - a $9 hand-cranked conical burr grinder. Good for travel. I bought one for an upcoming five-week stay in Japan.

I started the video where the action heats up. We see a man loading bread into an "automated machine. (I wonder if he ever is tempted to press the jolly, candy like button on the control panel?)The bread is separated into individual slices and melted butter is deposited on each slice, followed by mayo. Then it's on to the cheese depositing phase, which is a manual operation. We get to see workers load "logs of ham" onto a slicer. (Get a load of the spring constant on that ham log!)And so on. By the end, you'd be forgiven if you never want to eat a sandwich ever again.

A woman has accused Silicon Valley star T.J. Miller of sexually assaulting, choking and punching her while they were both in college. She'd actually accused him after it happened and had brought it to a student court at George Washington University, but now she is accusing him publicly, giving the full story to The Daily Beast. She wishes to remain anonymous to avoid retribution, so The Daily Beast simply refers to her as "Sarah."The story isn't new to everyone – some female comedians have refused to work with Miller throughout the years because they had heard about his alleged misconduct.Sarah and Miller met in the same comedy troupe at George Washington, and started dating. One night, a couple of months into their relationship, they had "had a lot to drink," so Sarah's memory of that night is a bit spotty.According to The Daily Beast:However, Sarah said she has a distinct memory that as they were “fooling around” at her place, Miller began “shaking me violently” and punched her in the mouth during sex.Sarah said that she woke up the following morning with a fractured tooth and a bloodied lip. When she asked Miller about it that morning, he claimed, according to Sarah, that she had simply fallen down drunkenly the past evening.Although she was "unsettled," she continued to see Miller.They soon met at a college party, and left in a cab to head back to the apartment she had been renting with her roommates. When they arrived back at her home, they began to engage in consensual sex—but then Miller became violent again, Sarah said. She emphasized that she had not had more than two drinks that evening, and that her memory of the following “five-hour” ordeal was and is “crystal-clear.”“We started to fool around, and very early in that, he put his hands around my throat and closed them, and I couldn’t breathe,” she recalled. “I was genuinely terrified and completely surprised. I understand now that this is for some people a kink, and I continue to believe it is [something] that should be entered into by consenting parties. But, as someone who had only begun having sexual encounters, like, about three months earlier, I had no awareness this was a kink, and I had certainly not entered into any agreement that I would be choked.Sarah says she was choking loud enough for her neighbors to come rushing over to check on her. When they asked her if she was okay she said she didn't know, and that she'd talk to them in the morning.“He pulled me back to bed and more things happened,” Sarah said. “He anally penetrated me without my consent, which I actually believe at that point I cried out, like, ‘No,’ and he didn’t continue to do that—but he also had a [beer] bottle with him the entire time. He used the bottle at one point to penetrate me without my consent.”The Daily Beast has talked to one of the concerned neighbors from that night, who confirms the story. They've corroborated the details of the story with five "GW contemporaries" and other associates of both Sarah and Miller. But Miller denies the accusations, and has told The Daily Beast that he is the victim of the story.Read the full details at The Daily Beast.Image: Gage Skidmore

Was the designer of the 2018 World Chess Championship logo inspired by Betty and Veronica?From Digg:Yes. It is what you think it is. No. It was not a mistake. Announced earlier this week in a press release, the folks over at FIDE are very proud of their logo. "Key visual for the 2018 World Chess Championship is controversial and trendy, just like the host city," they say in the release. London, so controversial (Brexit, I guess?). So trendy (Can a city that's been the center of Western Civilization for nearly a millennial be considered "trendy?").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n3uane1UT8It's eschatology in motion: 62 tests carried out between 1945 and 1962, of detonations filmed from up to 50 angles. A total of 210 tests were carried out and this tranche is a good slice of them. (more…)

According to Politiscales, a political Myers-Briggs type questionnaire and sorting hat, I'm some kind of happy hippy anarchist with no time for terfs. I often found the questions vague or open to interpretation, so would moderate answers that might be more assertively stated down the pub. It coughed up this nice purple flag, too. I've never seen it before and Google Images doesn't know what it represents, but it's rather suggestive of the sexier regions of the left.

Twitter began enforcing new rules against violent and hateful groups and content yesterday; early results suggest that the institutional accounts of extremist parties, groups and media are being closed en-masse, but enforcement aganst individuals and mouthpieces is patchy, especially when it comes to American white nationalists and conspiracy theorists.Twitter announced in October that it planned to take a tougher stance against hate symbols as well as those who posted messages that glorified or condoned violence.It has now said that those who express an affiliation with groups that use or celebrate violence to achieve their aims will be permanently suspended.Hateful imagery - such as the Nazi swastika - can still be posted, but will initially be hidden behind a "sensitive media" warning, that visitors must disable to proceed. However, such content will no longer be allowed on a person's profile page.Those that featured examples will be asked to remove them. Repeat violators will be banned.The share price is up 10% in the hours since, but it's been soaring anyway and Twitter also announced investor-pleasing features this week. Best not fall into the trap of anointing the market as a validator of good ethics.

Debbie Urbanski's story "An Incomplete Timeline of What We Tried" for Motherboard takes the improbable form of a list of failed strategies for coping with the incipient, climate-driven uninhabitability of the Earth, and it works beautifully. (more…)

Perhaps 2017 wasn't your most productive year, but that's okay because the Tim Ferriss Tribe of Mentors Dream Setup Giveaway gives you a chance to make 2018 a year of successful resolutions backed by a trove of productivity-boosting tools. 100 percent free to enter, this giveaway grants you the chance to take home a host of helpful hardware, like a MacBook Pro, iPhone X, and more.Celebrating the release of #1 New York Times best-selling author Tim Ferriss's new book, this giveaway packages together several gear and gadget bundles for three lucky winners. Ferriss is one of the world's leading productivity experts, and he's garnered the secrets of some of the world's most productive and successful people. Enter to win, and you could take home a massive collection of Apple hardware, or one of two productivity-focused bundles of equipment chosen by members of Tim's Tribe of Mentors.Simply sign up to enter for free, and you'll secure your spot in the Tim Ferriss Tribe of Mentors Dream Setup Giveaway.

This risky rescue could have gone wrong in a number of ways, but the first responders were able to save a horse that had walked onto thin ice without injuring the horse or themselves. (more…)

The Beyond the Brick channel headed to Billund, Denmark for a superfan's tour of the LEGO House. What's great about this tour is that the host knows the names of many of the builders, and has met a lot of them personally, giving the tour a real insider's feel. (more…)

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of discovering the tomb of King Tut, many of the Boy King's artifacts and other ancient Egyptian items will be touring the United States in the new year.Lonely Planet writes:The largest ever international exhibition of ancient Egyptian artefacts from the tomb of its most famous pharaoh will open early next year in Los Angeles. King Tut: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh will visit ten different cities as it tours the world starting off on the West Coast of America on 24 March.More than 150 items from Tutankhamun’s tomb will be on display at the California Science Center. The exhibition will be an absolute treat for Egyptologists – both amateur and professional – as never before have so many ancient items associated with King Tut been on display together outside Egypt. Many of the items would have been used by the Boy King himself including golden jewellery, elaborate carvings, sculptures, and ritual antiquities.Forty per cent of the objects will be leaving home for both the first and last time before returning for permanent display in the Grand Egyptian Museum, which is currently under construction.You can first see the exhibit in Los Angeles before it heads to Europe and then to its new permanent home at The Grand Egyptian Museum (which is located near the Pyramids of Giza). Be sure to pre-register for the L.A. exhibit now.https://youtu.be/YTP3pZyzb_UOf course you can't talk about a King Tut without being reminded of Steve Martin's bit on Saturday Night Live in 1978. The now-39-year-old sketch was satire on the Tutankhamun exhibit's popularity when it traveled the US from 1976 to 1979. It has recently come under fire for being racist ("That’s like somebody … making a song just littered with the n-word everywhere") by some Reed College students:https://youtu.be/FYbavuReVF4Biggest ever King Tut exhibition coming to America next yearThanks, Karen!

Matt Damon is missing the point, but I am glad it appears Matt Damon does not hurt other people. Honestly, what a terrible way for Matt Damon to promote Matt Damon's new movie.Via Business Insider:Matt Damon thinks the men in Hollywood who aren't sexual predators should be talked about more.The flood of sexual-misconduct allegations since The New York Times and The New Yorker published bombshell reports in October detailing those against the producer Harvey Weinstein have included some of the biggest names in entertainment, media, and politics.But Damon says not all the men in Hollywood are despicable."We're in this watershed moment, and it's great, but I think one thing that's not being talked about is there are a whole s---load of guys — the preponderance of men I've worked with — who don't do this kind of thing and whose lives aren't going to be affected," Damon told Business Insider while promoting his new movie, "Downsizing," opening in theaters Friday."If I have to sign a sexual-harassment thing, I don't care, I'll sign it," he said. "I would have signed it before. I don't do that, and most of the people I know don't do that."

After a series of scandals and rumors, the Hall of Presidents at Walt Disney World has reopened with its Donald Trump robot, which "features the latest advances in technology that enable smoother and more lifelike movements" and "personally recorded remarks exclusively for The Hall of Presidents." (more…)

JCPenney, whose name I did not realize no longer contains a space in it, removed a racist display from their Sioux City, Iowa location. Mannequins wore various "Tribe" themed clothing.The decorative use of arrows really ends the need for apologists to try. The additional WINE and BEER shirts make me pretty angry.Via Indian Country Today:The JCPenney at Southern Hills Mall, a shopping mall in Sioux City, Iowa is under fire on social media after Facebook posts including a video and a photo were created by Iowa resident Michelle Free-LaMere. The video posted by Free-LaMere has gone viral having received 51k views within two days of being posted. The video currently stands at 101k views.The posts contain four mannequins wearing different ‘Tribe-themed’ t-shirts that say ‘Tribe Leader,’ ‘Love My Tribe’ and ‘New to the Tribe’ which are standing between additional t-shirts with the phrases ‘Wine Wine Wine’ and ‘Beer Beer Beer.’Comments on social media have been largely negative toward JCPenney.“Just sad and disrespectful,” said Katrina RedOwl from Pasadena, California. Mikki Naranjo from Ignacio, Colorado said she will no longer shop at the store. “That is just disgusting of Management of JCPenney put that display up. I will no longer shop there!”

https://vimeo.com/245992513Filmmaker Brett Gaylor (previously) realized that Google had saved all the voice-searches his five-year-old had done since he discovered the feature a year ago; in a charming little animated documentary, Brett muses on the ambivalent miracle of a child being able to do research on anything or anything (but while storing all their intellectual history with a giant, creepy multinational company).

The New York Times has an article about "Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program." $22 million spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, there are 2 declassified released videos that the reader is left to assume is proof of alien visitors (one of the authors of the articles is promoting a UFO book at this time). It has a lot of facts the NYTimes left out like the CEO of the newly formed crowdfunded company via the CROWDFUND ACT, Tom DeLonge. If you’re wondering if it’s that Tom DeLonge, yes! DeLonge was the guitarist and co-lead vocalist of the band Blink-182. It was reported that DeLonge allegedly left Blink-182 in 2015 because of aliens and national security. (more…)

More Christmas fun with the British middle class! Previously: When gifts are for the giver.

I've not see these videos of The Beatles' " Paperback Writer" and "Rain" before. The quality is great and I love both of these songs, especially Ringo's phenomenal drumming on "Rain."https://youtu.be/cK5G8fPmWeA(Thanks, Mark!)

In 2013, Tea Party activists claimed that they'd been singled out by the IRS for political reasons, and that's why their associated nonprofits were not being approved by the tax agency. In reality, a longrunning investigation found that the IRS was merely incompetent and understaffed, but the Tea Party's tactic of going after the referee rather than the system worked for them: the result was an IRS that has had its resources cut even further, leaving it less -- nor more -- able to evaluate charitable organizations that apply for tax-exempt status. (more…)

In case you've never heard of gender reveal parties, let me clue you in. It's a celebration for expecting parents, or their guests (or sometimes both), that announces the gender of the child, usually in creative ways. First-year Burners Lainey Deanne and Wesley Robinson of Utah conceived their first child at Burning Man this past summer. So, it makes sense that they would light a miniature model of the Man on fire in their backyard bbq grill as a way to reveal their baby's gender. Most folks use the colors pink or blue in some way to let everyone in on the surprise, but as their mini-Man burnt, a name was uncovered instead (it's difficult to see in the video). Spoiler alert: It's a boy! Baby Isaac J Mike will arrive in May 2018.Congrats to the Robinsons!

A Polish entomologist has observed and recorded footage of a bee-like moth called the Oriental blue clearwing. (more…)

This little faux-gloved hand will pinch chips for you, so your own hands won't get greasy. You don't need it, no one does, but if you have to know, this poorly-reviewed product is available for $4.24 on Amazon.From its description: *NO Grease any more!Just the Way I Like:In common sense,many people like eating snacks like potato crisps while ussing computer.* It directly leads to a very greasy hands and keyboard.* This heavily demage our health and clean imageFrom now on,let Potato Crisp Hand regain our elegant and healthy eating style.* The item designed like a just a hand,can use thumb and forefinger on the hand to control.* when we want to eat crisp,just hold the rod of the hand,push the button,the thumb and the forefinger can be closed and pick up the crisps.* In fact,just like our thumb and forefinger to pick up the crisps.* The unique hold system inside allow to Apply the most appropriate strength on the chips to not let the crisp be broken.* Therefore we got a elegant and healthy eating crisp way.Elegant. Healthy. RIGHT...(Foodiggity, Oh Gizmo!)

FixNation is a nonprofit working to reduce the feral cat population. To raise funds, they commissioned cool cat shelters from prominent Los Angeles architecture firms, then auctioned the structures like Flora-Gato in the video for charity. (more…)

Visitors to the Minoo reserve in Japan's Osaka prefecture have long observed female adolescent macaques mounting and humping adult male deer; in a fascinating paper (Sci-Hub open access link) in Archives of Sexual Behavior, three psychology researchers from the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, conduct a careful study of these behaviors ("the first quantitative study of heterospecific sexual behavior between a non-human primate and a non-primate species"), and, through a set of naturally occurring experiments, formed an evidence-supported picture of what's going on here. (more…)

A pass to the national parks ($80); vulva-shaped chocolates ($20; a donation to Planned Parenthood (varies); anything from Patagonia (they're suing Trump); ACLU tees ($28); Cards Against Humanity ($25) and many more items, all in The Guardian's Ultimate gift guide for the Trump-hater in your life. (Thanks, Mom!)

As the father of a five-month old baby and the owner of a copy of Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition, this has been the funniest 11 seconds of 2017.

The annual Share Festival, held in both Turin and Belgrade, features a juried prize for electronic art; this year's theme is "Fr@nkenstein: The Modern Prometheus," and will be judged by an international panel under the direction of Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic. (more…)

Sarah Jeong is right (as usual): Rogue One is about internet freedom, a movie about the struggle to upload a large file under time-constraint in a post-Net-Neutrality dystopia where Dropbox is a distant memory and you can't just email a file to yourself for later reference. (more…)

Tis the season (1:12:27). (more…)

The FCC is only allowed to change existing policies if they can show evidence of some change in facts, so at yesterday's bomb-threat haunted hearing to destroy Net Neutrality, Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and his Republican colleagues made a pro-forma recitation of the reasons justifying his extreme actions. (more…)

All of you.

This puppy looked so far gone, I don't think most people would have thought they could bring it back to life. But the determined, resourceful cyclist who found the pup did everything right, including cutting off the bottom of a water bottle and then using it as a tube to breath air into the puppy's mouth. The incredible rescue in this video is hard to watch, but seems to have a happy ending – I only wish we could find out how the puppy is doing now.

The Harry Potter series has an unusual new chapter and J.K. Rowling didn't write it, machines did.Botnick Studios, a "human-machine creative collective" which describes itself as "a community of writers, artists and developers collaborating with machines to create strange new things," created a predictive keyboard that later penned the unauthorized chapter. By "training" the keyboard on all seven Harry Potter titles, machines were able to write this humorous new work. Harry Potter and the Portrait of what Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash is the fabricated book's title and the faux chapter is called, "The Handsome One."Here's a few quotes from its ghostwritten pages:"Magic: it was something that Harry Potter thought was very good.""Ron's shirt was just as bad as Ron himself.""The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: 'You are Hagrid now.'""'The password was BEEF WOMEN,' Hermione cried."Read the entire chapter here. Be sure to take a look at Botnick's other work, like this predictive text Thanksgiving dinner video.("BEEF WOMEN" will now be my new password.)

Hey Santa, 1983 called. Eddie Murphy wants his tight red leather suit back.This Team Coco bit imagines Santa Claus telling off-color jokes for a stand-up comedy special on Netflix called, "Sack Up! Santa Live!" It's so wrong.

The University of Pennsylvania's Matt Blaze (previously) is a legendary figure in cryptography and security circles; most recently he convened Defcon's Vote Hacking Village where security experts with no particular knowledge of voting machines repeatedly, fatally hacked surplus voting machines of the sort routinely used in US elections. (more…)

To celebrate the upcoming release of The Last Jedi, we’re offering a selection of Star Wars-themed interior decorations in the Boing Boing Store for 15% off the usual retail value — all you have to do is enter coupon code GIFTSHOP15 during checkout. Here’s what you can get:3D Mega LampsThese custom-fabricated LED lamps light up the darkness with eye-catching 3D illusions. They’re modeled after a handful of fan-favorite ships and characters, so you can choose one that best matches your digs. If you strongly identify with heroic outlaws like Han and Chewie, you can get one shaped like the iconic Millennium Falcon. Alternatively, anyone who respects the brutal authoritarianism of the empire will die for a 3D Death Star lamp. And for the pacifist droid lovers, we’ve even got one shaped like gravity-defying BB-8. Each one of these 3D Mega Lamps goes for $39.99, but you can take an extra 15% off with code GIFTSHOP15.Star Wars 3D DIY Metal SculpturesGive your office desk some galactic flair with a statue of your favorite Star Wars spacecraft. After choosing which side of the force you’re on, you can put these metal sculptures together yourself. They come in a variety of classic shapes, including X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and Imperial Star Destroyer. Save 15% off our normal $9.99 price when you enter GIFTSHOP15 at checkout.Star Wars ArtThese wall hangings are printed on high-quality 100 lb archival paper, so you can be sure that they’ll last. This artwork is by illustrator Devin Schoeffler, and it depicts memorable scenes from the original trilogy like Luke’s training in the Dagobah system, and the the Empire’s assault on Hoth. These posters are in the Boing Boing Store for $19.99, but you can save an additional 15% with code GIFTSHOP15.

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Not only that, but as Randy Michaels quipped, "The most Christmas carols ever gathered in one book. Period." (more…)

As a safety measure, SNL writer Nick Kocher recently installed a Nest cam in his apartment. He then left town for the weekend, letting his friend Jon Bass crash at his place. (more…)

Donald Trump's FCC Chairman Ajit Pai made a terrible, unfunny video mocking the tens of millions of Net Neutrality advocates whose comments he has discarded (along with filings from the internet's inventors and leading scientists and engineers). The video was posted to the fringe-right website The Daily Caller. (more…)

When Massachusetts GOP Senator Scott Brown was elected in a 2010 special election, Senate Democrats agreed to delay a key vote on health care reform until he could be seated, so that the vote would be held by elected officials, not the appointed lame duck who was sitting in the seat that Brown was about to occupy. (more…)

It’s rare, but once in a while the tabloids just get a story right. While Us magazine bores us with the “most fascinating people of 2017” (Melania Trump? Meghan Markle?) and the National Enquirer tells us “What shocked and rocked in 2017” (branding Hollywood’s sex harassment scandals “Pervnado"), it is the Globe that hits the pitch-perfect end-of-year note with its “50 Most Annoying People of 2017.”Its catalogue of “whiners, losers and lamebrains” is hard to argue with: Kim Kardashian, Bill O’Reilly, Justin Bieber, Madonna, Harvey Weinstein, Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow . . . the list goes on. Caitlyn Jenner, Megyn Kelly, Anthony Scaramucci, Johnny Depp . . . there’s ten pages of this, and I’ll bet they could have filled the entire magazine with names if they wanted to.Yet the Globe inexplicably omits the year's unquestionably most annoying person: Donald Trump. It’s another week when the Trump-toadying tabloids become the mouthpiece of the White House, with highly debatable information that appears spoon-fed from the West Wing.“Clintons Rigged Trump Investigation!” screams the grammatically-challenged cover of the Enquirer, which claims to have exposed “Bill & Hillary’s dirty tricks” in loading special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team with Clinton supporters. But while Mueller’s law firm WilmerHale indeed made contributions to Democrats as the Enquirer alleges, it also made substantial contributions to Republicans, in fact donating almost twice as much to Republicans from 1996 to 2002, though favoring Democrats in recent years.Prince Harry’s betrothed Meghan Markle’s father Tom “won’t live to see wedding,” predicts the Enquirer, based solely on a photo that shows the 73-year-old appearing rather portly. They roll out the standard rent-a-quote doctors to explain the health dangers of being overweight, concluding that Mr. Markle is “eating and smoking himself to early grave.” Obesity carries many risks, it’s true, but it takes the Enquirer team of medically trained psychics to diagnose that Mr. Markle’s demise will come before his daughter’s wedding in May.The Globe doesn’t need psychics, however, when it has a “body language expert” to predict that Big Bang Theory actress Kaley Cuoco’s “upcoming marriage is doomed!” It must be right – you can’t argue with science.The Queen’s “last Christmas” is in ruins, reports the Globe. You might think she’d be happy with a third child on the way for grandson Prince William, and Prince Harry poised to walk down the aisle, but no – the Globe reveals: “It’s malice at the palace like we’ve never seen before,” according to an “insider.” Maybe it's one of the Queen’s Corgis ratting out the Royals again. Apparently the Royals are all at each others’ throats, because they’re just characters in a soap opera, after all.Old houses always need a lot of maintenance, and the White House is no exception. The General Services Administration, which maintains the venerable mansion, recently reported that it has dealt with cockroach infestations, mice and ants, and replaced a toilet seat in the Oval Office bathroom – all routine problems that have plagued the abode for decades, through successive administrations. But that’s enough for the Globe to claim: “Obama family left place a total disaster . . . leaving it a disgusting vermin-infested roach motel."Snopes has noted that President Jimmy Carter battled mice and that First Lady Barbara Bush had a run-in with a rat. President Grover Cleveland’s wife found a giant rat trying to devour her pet canary, and lamented numerous infestations of spiders and cockroaches. Screw history, says the Globe, it’s all the fault of those filthy Obamas.People magazine barely brightens the mood with its innocuously bland cover story on Full House star John Stamos revealing: “I’m Gonna Be a Dad!” When a man realizes at the age of 54 that “I had to do some work on myself first” before considering fatherhood, and admits "I had to straighten up,” it’s not so much a reason for celebration as it is for sadness that it took him so long.Fortunately Us magazine’s crack team of investigative reporters tell us that Jennifer Lopez wore it best (when did we stop calling her J Lo?), that Kate Sackhoff carries eyedrops, decongestant and skin cream in her Chanel bag, and that the stars are just like us: they grocery shop, buy Christmas trees and feed parking meters. But wait! This week Us brings us a rare page of reality: “Stars – They’re NOT like Us!” They ride on yachts, have streets named after them, and fly in private jets. I always had my suspicions that the stars were not like us, but now it’s finally been proven! Thank you, Us magazine.Onwards and downwards . . .

Last night Kentucky Republican state Rep. Dan Johnson drove onto a bridge in Louisville, Kentucky, shot himself inside his car, and died. 24 hours earlier, he had been publicly accused of molesting a teenager in 2013.In 2013, then 17-year-old Maranda Richmond had to ward off a drunk evangelical pastor – Dan Johnson – who kissed her and put his hands underneath her clothes inside a church on New Years Day. Three months later she reported the incident to police, and the Louisville Metro Police Department started but then closed an investigation without charging Johnson.In January of this year pastor Johnson became a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives from the 49th district, but it wasn't until earlier this week that the molestation case was made public with a lengthy report by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting.According to CNN:The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting got its hands on police documents on the alleged sexual assault, and interviewed Richmond, leading to its story on how Johnson allegedly forced himself on her when she was a teenager.On Tuesday, a day after the center published its report, Johnson denied the allegations, saying Richmond was motivated by his political opponents."This allegation concerning this young girl absolutely has no merit," he said. "As a matter of fact, some of this I heard yesterday for the first time as I read the story."...Johnson posted a message on his Facebook page Wednesday evening, saying the accusations "are false" and 'only God knows the truth." The post appears to have been deleted. https://youtu.be/38tqfW9-ncg

Patients of Dr. Simon Bramhall probably weren’t expecting an autograph on their transplanted organs. That didn’t stop the surgeon from signing their livers like Roy Moore on high school yearbook day. Bramhall pleaded guilty to two counts of assault for using an argon beam to burn his initials on two patients’ livers at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital in 2013, according to the BBC. The beam can be used to sketch a non-harmful outline for operation on the livers surface. Bramhall pleaded not guilty to assault causing bodily harm. His initials were originally discovered by another surgeon. Via the BBC: "It was done in the presence of colleagues," he said.His actions were carried out "with a disregard for the feelings of unconscious patients", the prosecutor added.Bramhall resigned after a disciplinary hearing with University Hospitals Birmingham Foundation Trust in May 2014.Image: Alex Nelson