Boing Boing

A year-long investigation of private Facebook hate groups by REVEAL finds close to 400 current and retired law enforcement officers are members, including officers from small towns as well as big cities -- including NYPD.Snip:One guard at the Angola prison in Louisiana, Geoffery Crosby, was a member of 56 extremist groups, including 45 Confederate groups and one called “BAN THE NAACP.”A detective at the Harris County Sheriff’s Office in Houston, James “J.T.” Thomas, was a member of the closed Facebook group “The White Privilege Club.” “One cop was fired before we even published,” writes Reveal's Aura Bogado.Inside these Facebook hate groups, which require the approval of a doorkeeper “administrator” before one can become a member, active duty and retired police officers are swapping memes and jokes in Confederate, anti-Islam, anti-queer, anti-women, and anti-government militia communities.From the Reveal feature article:These cops have worked at every level of American law enforcement, from tiny, rural sheriff’s departments to the largest agencies in the country, such as the Los Angeles and New York police departments. They work in jails and schools and airports, on boats and trains and in patrol cars. And, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting discovered, they also read and contribute to groups such as “White Lives Matter” and “DEATH TO ISLAM UNDERCOVER.”The groups cover a range of extremist ideologies. Some present themselves publicly as being dedicated to benign historical discussion of the Confederacy, but are replete with racism inside. Some trade in anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant memes. Read the rest

The real menace in "Jurassic Park" wasn't a T-Rex or any other dinosaur. Turns out it was Pee-wee Herman! Enjoy Pixel Riot's meticulously rotoscoped mashup of "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" and "Jurassic Park," aka "Pee-wee's Jurassic Adventure." Absolute genius!They write:I wanted to see what would happen if I spliced Pee Wee into Jurassic Park. I think it works pretty well! I replaced almost 100% of the audio. I'll never rotoscope someone on a bike ever again...(Pee-wee Herman) Read the rest

For years, Paul Hansmeier terrorized internet users through his copyright trolling racket Prenda Law, evading the law through shell companies and fraud, until, finally, he was brought to justice and pleaded guilty last August.Now, Hansmeier has been sentenced to 14 years in prison and must pay $1.5m in restitution to his victims -- people he accused of being copyright infringers and then bullied into paying "settlement" fees to avoid being dragged through expensive litigation. Any Prenda Law victim can contact the Minnesota DA to apply for compensation. Prenda's tactics included identity theft, entrapment (uploading their own files to The Pirate Bay in order to generate downloads that they could threaten people over), and several kinds of fraud.Hansmeier and his co-defendant, John Steele, were indicted for money laundering, perjury, mail and wire fraud. Both men entered into plea agreements.James Renken attended and livetweeted the sentencing, noting that the judge handed down a sentence in excess of that requested by the prosecutor through the plea deal, saying that Hansmeier's "abuse of trust harmed the administration of justice...Like a wrecking ball to the trust and confidence people have in the administration of justice."Steele will be sentenced next month; the prosecutor is seeking 8-10 years in prison.Whether the people that were sued were indeed guilty wasn’t much of an issue. This means that many innocent people were likely targeted as well.“Hansmeier was generally content to take this step without investigating whether the subscriber was, in fact, the infringer. Read the rest

Americans who are poor increasingly use mobile phones as their primary way to go online.

Billionaires Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennady Bogolyubov used to own Privatbank -- the largest bank in Ukraine -- and now they are being sued for using it for a decade to launder more than $470b (through its Cyprus subsidiary) ($470b is more than double the GDP of Cyprus over the same period).The bank's new owners are suing Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov for violating Ohio and Delaware racketeering laws. They claim that Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov used the laundered proceeds to buy up whole neighborhoods in Cleveland, becoming the city's largest landowner. Additionally, they are accused of buying "several ferroalloy companies across multiple states" with laundered proceeds.It's the largest money-laundry scandal in history and it was only possible because US states allow anonymous parties to create thousands of cheap shell companies.The money trail is surprisingly simple. To begin with, the ultimate beneficiary owners collect retail deposits in Ukraine by offering good conditions and service. The money then flows to their subsidiary, PrivatBank Cyprus. In Cyprus, they benefit from the services of two local law firms.Untypically, the ultimate beneficiary owners did not take the precaution to establish multiple layers of shell companies in Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands, and Cayman Islands, as is common among Russians with seriously dirty money. Instead, they operated with three US individuals in Miami, who helped them to set up a large number of anonymous LLCs in the United States, mainly in Delaware, but also in Florida, New Jersey, and Oregon.The typical objects of post-Soviet money launderers are real estate in New York and southern Florida, but the investment profile of this group is different. Read the rest

If you're in the market for a long sleeve one-piece bathing suit with human organs on in, here you go. It's just on Amazon. Read the rest

Writer and data journalist Kevin Litman-Navarro subjected 150 privacy policies from leading online services to programmatic analysis for complexity (the Lexile test), and found them to be an incomprehensible mess second only to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in their lack of clarity.Ninth graders are expected to be able to read and understand texts with Lexile scores up to 1050; college students are expected to be able to read texts with Lexile scores up to 1300; trained doctors and lawyers are expected to cope with Lexile 1440 texts.Facebook's privacy policy is nestled comfortably between "A Brief History of Time" and "The Critique of Pure Reason."Litman-Navarro cites Center for Internet and Society director of consumer privacy Jen King, who describes these as "by lawyers, for lawyers" and challenges the sector to produce "human-centric" privacy policies that are "consumer tools."King suggests that privacy policies should contain "a list of companies that might purchase and use your personal information."One hopeful note: the European General Data Protection Regulation has produced meaningful improvements to many policies. A good privacy policy would help users understand how exposed they are: Something as simple as a list of companies that might purchase and use your personal information could go a long way towards setting a new bar for privacy-conscious behavior. For example, if you know that your weather app is constantly tracking your whereabouts and selling your location data as marketing research, you might want to turn off your location services entirely, or find a new app. Read the rest

I've praised Max Helmberger's excellent claymation videos about insects in the past. He has produced another, this time for the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program. From the YouTube description:The Hajek Lab group at Cornell University has been researching methods for biological control of Asian longhorned beetles using entomopathogenic fungi. This video describes the life cycle of Asian longhorned beetles and how an adult beetle gets infected, dies and transmits the infection to other Asian longhorned beetles.[via The Kid Should See This] Read the rest

Deviant Ollam is runs a physical security penetration testing company called The Core Group; in a flat-out amazing, riveting presentation from the 2017 Wild West Hackin' Fest, Ollam -- a master lockpicker -- describes how lockpicking is a last resort for the desperate, while the wily and knowledgeable gain access by attacking doors and locks with tools that quickly and undetectably open them.Ollam's techniques are just laugh-out-loud fantastic to watch: from removing the pins in hinges and lifting doors away from their high-security locks to sliding cheap tools between doors or under them to turn thumb-levers, bypass latches, and turn handles. My favorite were the easy-exit sensors that can be tricked into opening a pair of doors by blowing vape smoke (or squirting water, or releasing a balloon) through the crack down their middle.But more than anything, Ollam's lecture reminds me of the ground truth that anyone who learns lockpicking comes to: physical security is a predatory scam in which shoddy products are passed off onto naive consumers who have no idea how unfit for purpose they are. When locksport began, locksmiths were outraged that their long-held "secret" ways of bypassing, tricking and confounding locks had entered the public domain -- they accused the information security community of putting the public at risk by publishing the weaknesses in their products (infosec geeks also get accused of this every time they point out the weaknesses in digital products, of course).But the reality is that "bad guys" know about (and exploit) these vulnerabilities already. Read the rest

Mauro Morandi has been the sole inhabitant of Budelli Island in Italy since 1989. Great Big Story went to pay him a visit.In 1989, Mauro Morandi’s boat docked on Budelli Island off the northern coast of Sardinia, Italy. Discovering that the island’s caretaker was retiring within the next two days, Mauro decided to extend his stay indefinitely and step into the role himself. Little did he know that, nearly 30 years later, he would still be there. Mauro has built a small, simple life for himself on the island, collecting rain for drinking water, and building solar panels for electricity. Living alone, his love for his island paradise runs deep, and he hopes to stay as long as his health allows it.[via Like Cool] Read the rest

The millions of Hong Kong people participating in the #612strike uprising are justifiably worried about state retaliation, given the violent crackdowns on earlier uprisings like the Umbrella Revolution and Occupy Central; they're also justifiably worried that they will be punished after the fact.After all, the #612strike was triggered by a proposed legal change that would allow people in Hong Kong to be extradited to the Chinese mainland for political crimes -- and Hong Kong people already witnessed the horrific spectacle of dissident booksellers being kidnapped to China and then tortured into giving coerced, televised "confessions."The movement is taking countermeasures to avoid identification, using masks to beat facial recognition systems, organizing in encrypted Telegram chats (Telegram blamed the Chinese state for a wave of DDOS attacks that could disrupt these chatrooms), and using cash money to pay for subway fares to and from the protests, avoiding leaving identifiable e-payment trails.But all of that will be of limited use if the protesters are identified by other means. The most significant risk is from cell-site simulators -- briefcase-sized fake cellular towers that trick your phone into contacting them and coughing up its unique identifier, which can be used to conduct mass re-identifications of every person with a switched-on mobile phone at the protests. These devices are small, cheap, powerful, and can even mounted beneath aircraft, including drones.Unless the protesters are using burner phones -- not just burner SIMs, but burner handsets, too -- they face a significant de-anonymization risk.After all, they're using mobile phones to coordinate the protests themselves, and that means that they're effectively carrying always-on wireless nametags that the state can silently enumerate and store indefinitely. Read the rest

According to Fodor's Travel the best US airport is Burbank (BUR). I couldn't agree more. It's 7 miles from my house and takes 2o minutes to get there. "Burbank is an airport free of most of the hassles that take the fun out of travel plans," writes Fodor's. "It’s an agreeable airport in a perfect location, which is why it’s at the top of our list of airports to love."I'll pay a premium to fly from and to BUR, because my alternative is LAX, which Fodor's rates as the worst airport in the entire world. It's 26 miles from my house and it often takes 2 hours to get there in heavy 405 traffic. And once you get there, you'll get stuck in the "horseshoe." for another 30 minutes. From Fodor's: "Thanks to the improbably stupid design of its catastrophic horseshoe motor-loop, it regularly requires 30 minutes to travel the short mile from the outskirts of the airport to most of its terminals. And because Los Angeles was built as a city beholden to the automobile, there is no other way to arrive or depart from this maddening complex of suffering but through the interminable traffic."Image: Photo of LAX by Mark Frauenfelder Read the rest

Reverse mortgages -- complex home loans -- are aggressively marketed to elderly people, especially in African-American neighborhoods, using deceptive tactics that offer false promised to "eliminate monthly payments permanently" with "a risk-free way of being able to access home equity."Reverse mortgage sales went into overdrive just before the 2007/8 housing crisis and ramped up after that, and now, a decade later, seniors are discovering that they signed up for a financialized scam that is costing them their family homes, sometimes as a consequence of being widowed.USA Today has just published the result of its "first-of-its-kind analysis of more than 1.3 million loan records," finding more than 100,000 defaults, with African-Americans being hit the worst: "reverse mortgages end in foreclosure six times more often in predominantly black neighborhoods than in neighborhoods that are 80% white."Housing wealth is one of keys to understanding racial inequality in America: starting with the official redlining policies that let white families lift themselves out of poverty while condemning Black families to a cycle of rent and debt accumulation whose effects were felt down through subsequent generations -- and on to today, with home-ownership at historic lows and rents jacked up to historic highs, a parent's housing wealth may be the only way to escape the cycle.Black homeowners were the hardest-hit by the housing crisis: targeted for the most predatory, complex and deceptive financial "products," first evicted when those loans blew up. But the reverse-mortgage crisis had a longer fuse, one that's just burned all the way down, creating a "stealth aftershock" to the crisis. Read the rest

Joy Division's post-punk masterpiece "Unknown Pleasures" turns 40 this year. NME just republished an interview with two of the three surviving members of Joy Division -- bassist Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris -- about creating what is arguably one of the most influential albums of all time. Meanwhile, the surviving band members have invited ten video directors to create new music videos for each song on the album. Below is the first video for "I Remember Nothing," directed by Helgi & Hörður. From the NME:Was there anything that (producer) Martin Hannett did or asked you to do that was a bit too much?Morris: “I was alright with what he was asking us to do mostly, although he did make me use the aerosol can on the 12-inch version of ‘She’s Lost Control’ like you see in Control. He shut me in a room with a can of tape-cleaning fluid and made me press it in time with the song. By the end, the booth was just filled with noxious fumes. I think he was just trying to kill me. If I’d have lit up a fag, the whole of Strawberry Studios would have gone up in smoke.”Is it strange seeing that (album cover) design getting reproduced on just about anything and everything?Hook: “We never actually did an official ‘Unknown Pleasures’ T-shirt until 1994 but they got bootlegged all over the world. When we got investigated by the taxman because of the Haçienda being all fucked up, he said that he couldn’t find any receipts for ‘Unknown Pleasures’ T-shirts. Read the rest

"Tra la la" my ass. Read the rest

The Great State of Maine, having jettisoned its far-right lunatic "government" and replaced it with a responsive, progressive, evidence-based one, is now set to pass the nation's most stringent ISP privacy law, going further than both New York and California.The new law restores the Obama-era ISP privacy protections that Trump's FCC chair Ajit Pai canceled before they could go into effect: rules that ban your ISPs from selling or sharing or exploiting the about your internet use without your explicit consent (this is what California's law does, too, but in California, it's an opt-out rule and in Maine, it's opt-in, and literally no one ever wanted to opt in to having their phone company spy on them and then sell the information they glean thereby).The telcoms lobby, US Telecom, has objected on the ground that the Maine law will create a "patchwork" and consumers won't know what the rules are, because in US Telecom land, consumers are constantly buying internet connections in different states and relying on the rules from the last state to be in effect.(The fact that US Telecom is objecting to an opt-in rule really says it all: if they were convinced that their customers wanted to be spied on by their ISPs, then an opt-in would just be a small hurdle en route to providing their customers exactly what they want)The Maine law is a dare to both the FCC and Congress. Under Obama, FCC chairman Ajit Pai (then a mere commissioner) argued that the FCC could not tell states what rules the could and could not set for their ISPs (Pai, a former Verizon exec, wanted states to continue their practice of banning cities from setting up municipal broadband networks, while Obama's FCC chair Tom Wheeler [a former Comcast exec!] wanted to ban the practice). Read the rest

While some who saw this variable message sign in Houston though it had been hacked, it's actually a roadside art installation by Brooklyn artist Justin Brice Guariglia. The words come from Rice University professor Timothy Morton, author of Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence. The solar-powered sign, located at the Gus S. Wortham Memorial Fountain, will be displayed through August.(ABC13) Read the rest

In a 2016 article, Elie Bursztein collects and describes a gadget used to cheat at the card table.In 2015, I stumbled upon a post in an underground forum, discussing how someone was ripped off at a poker table by a very advanced poker cheating device. From what I understood at that time, the post being in Chinese, the device was able to remotely read card markings to inform the cheater who will win the next hand.Intrigued, I decided to follow the trail of this fabled device to see if people were indeed cheating at poker using devices that would fit naturally into a James Bond movie.Without spoiling too much of the rest of this post, let’s just say that the high-end cheating device that I was able to get my hands on far exceeded my expectations and it really is an outstanding piece of technology.I've watched the video demo of one of the gadgets (embedded above) and didn't figure the trick out. I won't spoil it for you, but for saying it's a $5000 fully functional Android smartphone with extra hardware: "Note that taking a screenshot of the cheating app turned out to be more difficult than expected because the ROM is hardened against analysis"Previously: HOWTO cheat your friends at poker Read the rest

"Come and play with us, Danny... for ever, and ever, and ever." The bigscreen adaptation of Doctor Sleep, Stephen King's 2013 novel sequel to The Shining, is out November 8. From the film description:"Doctor Sleep” continues the story of Danny Torrance, 40 years after his terrifying stay at the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson and newcomer Kyliegh Curran star in the supernatural thriller, directed by Mike Flanagan, from his own screenplay based upon the novel by Stephen King.Still irrevocably scarred by the trauma he endured as a child at the Overlook, Dan Torrance has fought to find some semblance of peace. But that peace is shattered when he encounters Abra, a courageous teenager with her own powerful extrasensory gift, known as the “shine.” Instinctively recognizing that Dan shares her power, Abra has sought him out, desperate for his help against the merciless Rose the Hat and her followers, The True Knot, who feed off the shine of innocents in their quest for immortality.Forming an unlikely alliance, Dan and Abra engage in a brutal life-or-death battle with Rose. Abra’s innocence and fearless embrace of her shine compel Dan to call upon his own powers as never before—at once facing his fears and reawakening the ghosts of the past. Read the rest

Designer Dominic Wilcox isn't short himself but sympathized with a woman at a concert who is, "I was standing at a gig and turned to see a small woman dancing away but unable to see the band. This gave me the inspiration to design a way for people to see over obstacles such as tall people like me." Dominic's initial sketchThat's how his One Foot Taller Periscope glasses came to be. Yes, the glasses make its wearers look silly but they allow them to see a solid foot over their normal eye level, ie. over the dang crowd. A sturdier version of these would probably sell well if they were actually for sale. Alas, he created them as a proof of concept for a contest that prompted its designers to come up with an extraordinary solution to an everyday problem.Dominic's got all kinds of great inventions. Take a look.(Funny or Die) Read the rest

Dropbox syncs files between computers, but who wants that? The New Dropbox, announced this week, has all sorts of wonderful features to organize your cloud content, package your designs, integrate with slack, and to eat half a gig of RAM just by running on your computer. John Gruber writes that it sucks.All I want from Dropbox is a folder that syncs perfectly across my devices and allows sharing with friends and colleagues. That’s it: a folder that syncs with sharing. And that’s what Dropbox was.Now it’s a monstrosity that embeds its own incredibly resource-heavy web browser engine. In a sense Steve Jobs was right — the old Dropbox was a feature not a product. But it was a feature well-worth paying for, and which made millions of people very happy.At Hacker News, former Dropbox employee Taylor Schwimmer puts it bluntly:Many people only use Dropbox as a backup and file share product. That's great. However, it's a terrible business, especially for DropboxIt's always interesting to go from using a simple, single-purpose tool to being locked inside a toolshed full of rickety contraptions. You wonder what happened, then notice all the enterprise customers manacled to the walls. Read the rest

Physical security keys, like those sold by Yubico, Thetis and Kensington, are a great way to lock down your digital lives. They also tend to be wicked fast compared to the wait you have to put on while you're waiting for a 2FA password to arrive via SMS or typing in a verification code from an app like Google Authenticator. Unless of course said security key is deeply, deeply borked.From Engadget:Yubico is recalling a line of security keys used by the U.S. government due to a firmware flaw. The company issued a security advisory today that warned of an issue in YubiKey FIPS Series devices with firmware versions 4.4.2 and 4.4.4 that reduced the randomness of the cryptographic keys it generates. The security keys are used by thousands of federal employees on a daily basis, letting them securely log-on to their devices by issuing one-time passwords.The problem in question occurs after the security key powers up. According to Yubico, a bug keeps "some predictable content" inside the device's data buffer that could impact the randomness of the keys generated. Security keys with ECDSA signatures are in particular danger. A total of 80 of the 256 bits generated by the key remain static, meaning an attacker who gains access to several signatures could recreate the private key.If someone reading this can school me on why anyone working at Yubico would think that keeping 'predictable content' on a device meant to secure highly-sensitive governmental systems and information, I'd appreciate it. Read the rest

Keep your eyes on the road ahead! You never know when an old guy might leap out in front of your vehicle. Read the rest

Heading abroad? Even if it's just a short trip, there's a lot to prepare for. Travel can be incredibly rewarding, but it can tricky to navigate different cultures and lodging arrangements - and even trickier to do it cheaply.Before you go shopping for suitcases, here's our pick for a good first investment: The Ultimate Travel Hacker Bundle 2019.This package of nine online courses covers the essential aspects of travel and can be useful even for those who've been around the globe a time or two. There are crash courses on Spanish and Chinese, plus lessons on how to navigate Airbnb and maximize your airline rewards. Best of all, the entire thing is up for grabs on a "pay what you want" basis. Make an offer, and any amount gets you part of the bundle. Beat the average price, and you take home the whole thing.Here's a breakdown of what's included:Become a Digital Nomad - Tips for keeping all your info safe and accessible anywhere you roam.Travel Hacking Mastery: Fly Around the World for Cheap - Find out how you can save on airline tickets by signing up for the right credit cards, all while keeping your score intact and skirting fees.The Abroaders Guide to Points & Miles - Booking the right flights to boost your rewards and reduce ticket prices by up to 90%.Chinese Made Easy: Understand 65% of Chinese In 10 Hours - A language boot camp that lets you speak conversational Mandarin in less than a day. Read the rest

Attorney and disgraced anti-Trump media gadfly Michael Avenatti has been sued again, this time over allegations he siphoned off a paraplegic client's $4 million settlement.Avenatti's disabled client Geoffrey Johnson says the $4 million settlement was from the county of Los Angeles in January 2015, for injuries he received trying to commit suicide by jumping off of an elevated floor in a downtown Los Angeles jail.Johnson's attempt to take his life was the second of two attempted suicides in the notoriously badly managed jail during August of 2011.Jonathan Stempel for Reuters:Geoffrey Johnson is seeking at least $9.5 million, plus punitive damages, from Avenatti and several former colleagues in his civil lawsuit filed with the Orange County Superior Court in California.“I never thought I would get victimized by my own attorney,” Johnson, who uses a wheelchair, said at a press conference on Thursday. “I wish he had just given me my money.”Johnson’s claims are also part of federal prosecutors’ criminal case against Avenatti, who has pleaded not guilty to wire fraud, bank fraud, extortion and other charges, including defrauding other clients, in California and New York.“Mr. Johnson’s claims are categorically false and frivolous, and his case will be thrown out of court,” Avenatti said in an email.Avenatti drew national attention through his representation of Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, in lawsuits against Trump and the president’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, and briefly flirted with a 2020 White House run.Read the rest: Michael Avenatti is sued for allegedly siphoning paraplegic's $4 million settlement Read the rest

Just don't piss them off.

They call him 'The DaVinci of Dirt.'

PlayStation Network was also down for a while on Thursday.

It is sad that any institution, especially such a revered sandwich shop as Langer's Deli, would behave so terribly.DailyDot:A famous Los Angeles sandwich shop, Langer’s Deli, is facing calls for a boycott after the owner kicked out two women for kissing in his restaurant.The woman and her date who experienced aggressive discrimination at Langer’s Deli have chosen to remain anonymous but gave friends permission to share their story. One friend, writer and critic April Wolfe, took to Twitter to share what happened to her friends, posting a screenshot of the Facebook post that details how they were kicked out.“My date and I had finished eating and we shared a kiss in our booth. Suddenly a man with a walkie-talkie was standing at our table. He introduced himself as Norm Langer and told us that he ‘can’t have this in his restaurant because some of the customers don’t understand.’” When the woman told him that she lived nearby and used to love this deli but would never eat there again, Langer told her she was being “selfish and inconsiderate of how other people felt.”Image via Josh Lim/Wikipedia Read the rest

POTUS says Sanders to leave post by end of June, no replacement announced

McMansion Hell (previously) rounds up the ten stupidest megahomes of Waukesha County, Wisconsin ("perhaps one of the most underrated McMansion counties in the country"), which is such a target-rich environment that proprietor Kate Wagner couldn't "choose just one to do a takedown of."This house was built in 2014, a time when people should definitely have known better. Its inclusion in this list is solely due to the absolutely bizarre geometry of its roof, a kind of geometry formerly unknown to mathematics until this time. Bonus points for the continued animosity to trees found in the wealthy populous of this county. 50 States of McMansion Hell: Top 10 Waukesha County, Wisconsin McMansions Read the rest

Vetements claims its clothes -- like this £291 unauthorized DHL tee -- cost so much because they use special factories and really good materials.It's hard to understand how its unauthorized €800 Pirate Bay hoodie pencils out, though -- which is why Pirate Bay co-founder Marcin de Kaminski denounced the product, citing its price, rather than any notional infringement, as the source of his ire.There's plenty weird going on with this garment, like the list of the nations of the world on the back that omits Sweden -- birthplace of The Pirate Bay.While the full ship emblem on the front isn’t an exact replica of the original, it’s so close as to make very little difference. Those squinting to read the text along the bottom are advised it reads “Vetements Free Downloads”, in case anyone doesn’t recognize this is a Pirate Bay-themed hoodie, of course.The back of this stunning piece of high-fashion cloth is adorned with an alphabetically-sorted list of countries of the world. While that’s perhaps expected given The Pirate Bay’s reach, Sweden – the site’s birthplace – is completely absent.The big question here is whether someone in the setting department screwed up and left Sweden out, or is this one of those clever fashion things that’s designed to provoke conversation. The Pirate Bay can be found everywhere except Sweden? That works – on a couple of levels.Red-Hot Vetements Fashion Brand is Selling an $845 Pirate Bay Hoodie [Andy/Torrentfreak] Read the rest

Biden said he was 'odd man out' with Democrats on abortion in 2006

.a.gif is a new file format from Rancid Bacon, which encodes audio files within standards-compliant GIFs, allow you to play audio during an animated GIF's playback; it is inefficient and weird, and therefore pretty terrific.(via Four Short Links) Read the rest

Alabama has 67 sheriffs -- elected law-enforcement officers who police unincorporated townships where they answer only to voters, not city governments -- and 9 out of ten of the sheriffs who lost their 2018 elections have been accused by their successors of engaging in fraud, waste and destruction of public property before leaving office.This is apparently something of a tradition in Alabama (Propublica's Connor Sheets calls it "vindictive hazing") and while some of the accusations are more prankish (removing the labels from all the sheriffs' keys and jumbling them in a big pile), others are dangerous (destroying all the food earmarked for prisoners) or outright criminal (making off with tens of thousands of dollars from the sheriff's "discretionary fund).Alarmingly, some of the sheriffs accused of these crimes have gone on to work in nearby sheriffs' departments.Here's a selection of the activities that the nine sheriffs have been accused of:* Former Marshall County Sheriff J. Scott Walls is accused of drilling holes in the department's mobile phones and computer hard-drives * Walls is also accused of spending the sheriff's discretionary fund dry by ordering more than 20,000 rolls of toilet paper, 10 drums of dishwashing soap and hundreds of boxes of garbage bags* Walls's successor says that Walls forced an inmate to put 40lbs of rice -- intended for prisoners' meals -- down a garbage disposal (this also broke the garbage disposal)* Walls wired $80,000 from the sheriff's general fund to his personal bank accounts during his tenure* Former Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin (who pocketed $750k earmarked for prisoners' meals and built himself a beach house, claiming that he was allowed to do so under a Prohibition-era law, prompting the Alabama legislature to pass new laws banning the practice) subsequently wrote himself $269,184 worth of checks from sheriff’s office account* Former Barbour County Sheriff Leroy Upshaw ended the handgun licensing and work-release programs (which raise fund the sheriff's discretionary fund) after his election loss, leaving the department effective broke (Upshaw now works for the sheriff in neighboring Russell County)* Former Covington County Sheriff Dennis Meeks spent $6,200 in public money on "coloring books, Frisbees, pencils and other promotional items emblazoned with his name"; and bought each of his deputies sidearms that used different type of ammo* After former Walker County Sheriff Jim Underwood lost his election, he spent $126,000 of the sheriff's discretionary fund in his three remaining months, more than he had spent in the previous 10 months -- blowing the cash on $9,000 worth of black rubber gloves (at $70/box -- the same gloves cost $10/box online), and a $13k dishwasher that can be bought for $10kPropublica's Sheets notes that "All the former sheriffs who responded to a reporter’s inquiries denied wrongdoing, often insulting their successor or providing a counternarrative aimed at disproving the claims."Aaron Littman, staff attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights, an Atlanta-based nonprofit civil rights law firm that advocates for criminal justice reform in Alabama and has sued sheriffs across the state for financial records, said in a statement that sheriffs “are not feudal kings” and need to be held accountable. Read the rest

Nick Griffiths suffered from frostbite while running in the Yukon Arctic ultra-marathon. After surgeons amputated three of his toes, he mailed two of them to Dawson City in the region where the Downtown Hotel's Sourdough Saloon uses (and reuses) disembodied digits in their infamous Sourtoe Cocktail that's been on the menu for forty years. From The Guardian:The beverage consists of a mummified human toe floating in a whiskey shot; patrons must let the digit – or its blackened nail – touch their lips in order to receive a certificate and qualify for admittance to the Sourtoe Cocktail Club.He kept one of the toes as “insurance” because, (Griffiths) said: “I’m not sure really you should be posting toes.More than a month later, the toes arrived in Dawson City. “We couldn’t be happier to receive a new toe. They are very hard to come by these days,” said the hotel in a statement.Terry Lee, the hotel’s “toe expert” will now preserve the digits in rock salt for at least six weeks before they are served in whiskey. Read the rest

When Elizabeth Warren proposed a Thomas Piketty-style wealth tax (2% annually on family fortunes over $50m, 1% more on fortunes over $1b), she ballparked the returns at $1.9-2.75t over the first ten years.Her opponents disagreed with her math, saying that the 75,000 US households whom the tax would apply to would never sit still for this kind of thing, and instead they would spend fortunes moving even larger fortunes offshore, hiding them in tax-havens, or even surrendering their US residency and citizenship.This is a common response to any progressive taxation proposal, and while I've known a few people who cashed out big on startups and effectively went into exile in the Grand Caymans or wherever rather than paying tax, most of them ended up getting terminally bored living in a place full of drunken wastrels and trustafarians and moved back home, paid their tax, and got stuck in doing their Next Thing. If you're a genuinely driven entrepreneur, yacht life is fucking boring and besides, paying 2% annually on the portion of your fortune exceeding $50,000,000 is not going to leave you a pauper. Neither you nor your kids nor their kids would ever have to work again if you managed that sum carefully.Now, a CNBC poll has found that 60% of American millionaires support Warren's wealth-tax; at the "upper tier" of Americans with a net worth in excess of $5m, the proposal enjoys 66% support.Other redistributive policies had different showings: while there was strong support for AOC's proposed 70% top rate of income tax, other proposals like eliminating mortgage deductions (which subsidize home owners but leave renters, who tend to be poorer, out in the cold) or Ron Wyden's plan to tax unrealized capital gains, are polling poorly. Read the rest

I bought this red retro wall clock in January 2o18. It's lightweight plastic but looks really nice. Amazon has it on sale right now: Read the rest

"That's a UFO! The flying saucer" (これがＵＦＯだ！ 空飛ぶ円盤) is a Japanese "documentary" about unidentified flying objects. It was first screened in 1975 at the annual Toei Anime Festival hosted by the famed Toei Animation studio, creators of Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball. The short film features classic UFO encounters like the Betty Barney Hill abduction case of 1961 and the 1948 story of Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Captain Thomas F. Mantel whose plane crashed while he chased a UFO. (r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

"Where do you think Blondie will be ten years from now?" "San Quentin." Read the rest

In 2012, Facebook settled an FTC privacy investigation by promising a host of privacy protections (that they never delivered on); now, the FTC is probing Facebook's noncompliance and they've demanded that the company let them look at Zuck's email, which prompted the company's legal team to have a look therein, and they really didn't like what they saw.Anonymous sources told the WSJ that Mark Zuckerberg's emails with other top execs revealed that they didn't make the FTC consent decree "a priority" as they planned the company strategy.This matter a lot. The FTC is a weird beast: for the most part, it operates on a two-strikes model. When the FTC determines that your company has done something sleazy, it generally sends you a stern, "Cut that shit out or else" letter, sometimes with specific instructions for conducting your business in the future without getting in trouble.This can feel really wrong. Remember when a bunch of laptop rental companies admitted that they'd been spying on their customers, making covert videos of them in the nude, recording them having sex, taking pics of their kids, plundering their music collections, etc, and the FTC ordered them to end the practice -- unless they added some fine print to their terms of service "notifying" customers that they did this kind of thing?The thing is, while the FTC is a sweetheart the first time around, if you make it come back at you, it can be a serious adversary: the FTC's powers to punish companies that fail to live up to the orders they get the first time around are prodigious, including massive fines and refer execs to the DOJ to face personal, criminal liability. Read the rest

Since May of 2013 I've enjoyed this Vivere double hammock and its space-saving steel stand.The price dropped to around $90 on average last year. It has been down to $70-ish once or twice, but I've gotten so much service from this kit, I think it was a deal at $140. Here is my first review.I have once replaced the hammock itself! I fault myself, and not the hammock due to my leaving it in the sun, wind, and rain for a few years. I now respectfully take the replacement hammock down at night and bring it in. Several years of use and the replacement looks good as new. I am sure if you care for yours it will last as well.The stand is good as new. Even in the salty sea air, it has merely developed a patina. I have kept this hammock about 200ft from the Pacific Ocean.My daughter and I frequently use the hammock. I love it for recovering from any illness, and sleeping outside at night. My kid likes to watch YouTube videos in out, as WIFI easily reaches the deck.Vivere Double Hammock with Space-Saving Steel Stand via Amazon Read the rest

These transit safes were designed to keep people from snooping or stealing contents of FedEx packages but look how easily this guy picks the lock using simple lockpicking tools.[via Doobybrain]Image: YouTube Read the rest

Multilevel marketing companies are legal pyramid schemes that screw over gullible, desperate people who believe they'll make money by convincing other desperate people to convince other desperate people to fork over money to the people at the top of the pyramid. Samantha Bee does a great job exposing these shady outfits who happily ruin people's lives. Read the rest

You’re a tabloid reporter and you’re used to fabricating many of the “facts” and “quotes” in your stories, but there are some days when you can’t even be bothered to do that with any conviction, days when your fevered imagination doesn’t have the energy to get out of bed.So you get what we see in this week’s tabloids.George & Amal Clooney are "Dating Other People!” reports the ’National Enquirer,’ in an “Exclusive" inspired by the Clooneys announcing a charity fundraiser offering the winner a private dinner with the celebrity couple at their home in Italy.The ‘Enquirer’ amazingly interprets the Clooneys' altruism as “an excuse to ignore their wedding vows,” suggesting that the couple are wife-swapping swingers for charity, and that George has “opened the door to other men to enjoy the company of his leggy 41-year-old wife!” Expect the Clooneys to fire off an uncharitable lawsuit any minute now.The ‘Globe’ cover’s obligatory story about the British Royals boasts: “Explosive Police Dossier Found! Charles’ Motive For Murdering Diana!” Prince Charles allegedly had Diana killed because she was scheming to have him bypassed by the Queen so that the crown would go to son William after QE!!’s death. Which makes no sense: As we’ve noted before, The Act of Settlement of 1701 demands that the monarch’s male heir succeed to the throne no matter what anyone wants. Moreover, Diana was divorced from Charles and anathema to the Palace at the time of her demise, so there’s no way the Queen would have done Diana’s bidding. Read the rest

Joint pain. Poor digestion. Hair loss. Erectile dysfunction. No libido. These are just a few of the lasting symptoms experienced by Kim Dong-hyeon, a bodybuilder in South Korea, after using over $3,000 of black-market steroids per month for many years. In this video he tells an Asian Boss reporter that he injected himself with steroids 20 times a day and that 98% of bodybuilders in South Korea take steroids. Read the rest

Evidently that wasn't all, folks.Animation Scoop:Looney Tunes Cartoons is a series of new short form cartoons starring the iconic and beloved Looney Tunes characters. With a crew of some of the premier artists working in animation today, each “season” will produce 1,000 minutes of all-new Looney Tunes animation that will be distributed across multiple platforms — including digital, mobile and broadcast.Looney Tunes Cartoons echoes the high production value and process of the original Looney Tunes theatrical shorts, with a cartoonist-driven approach to storytelling. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and other marquee Looney Tunes characters will be featured in their classic pairings in simple, gag-driven and visually vibrant stories. Each cartoon will vary from one to six minutes in length and, from the premise on through to the jokes, will be “written” and drawn by the cartoonists, allowing their own personality and style to come through in each cartoon.Looney Tunes Cartoons is produced by Warner Bros. Animation and features veteran Looney Tunes voice cast members, including Eric Bauza, Jeff Bergman and Bob Bergen. Sam Register (Teen Titans Go!) and Peter Browngardt (Uncle Grandpa) serve as executive producers. Read the rest

Reasonable folks in El Sobrante do not like living with a symbol of hatred and oppression out in the open. A petition asking the idiot who cemented a swastika in his yard to remove it has been created. A protest has been planned.Mr. Swastika thinks it is funny that fighting Nazism isn't just a local thing. I hope he likes cleaning egg off his cars.SF Chron:Johnson, reached by phone, said he hadn’t seen the petition, but he didn’t sound impressed.“It sure is funny that all those people signing the petition don’t even live in this neighborhood,” he said.Care2’s website notes that less than a third of the people who have signed the petition live in California.Since news stories about the swastika appeared, Johnson’s car and two pickup trucks have been egged, he said. He suspects neighbors. The answering machine on his phone has been filled with insults and threats, he added, and lots of people have driven past and taken photographs.Johnson covered the swastika with “blankets and stuff to calm things down,” but he hasn’t removed the offending symbol — though he held out the possibility.“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do,” Johnson said. “There’s been a lot more (reaction) than I expected. Everybody’s on my butt about this.”Clearly, the petition won't work but it helps keep the heat on. Read the rest

During a commercial break at the Tony Awards, host James Corden ran down to the audience and asked Billy Porter if he'd sing an impromptu karaoke song. Porter took the opportunity, as the pro that he is, and belted out "Everything's Coming Up Roses" from the Broadway classic "Gypsy." Of course, he slayed it! Read the rest

With Theresa May stepping down as Conservative Party leader, her position—and with it the job of Prime Minister—will go to one of many candidates standing to replace her. In the first round of voting today, presumptive favorite Boris Johnson won the most votes and three others were knocked out. Seven proceed to the second vote next week.Mark Harper, Andrea Leadsom and Esther McVey - have been knocked out, in the secret ballot held in the House of Commons. Mr Johnson received 114 votes, Jeremy Hunt was second with 43, and Michael Gove third with 37 votes. The BBC graphic above shows how things shook out. Gove was badly hurt by last week's media exposé on the candidates' youthful drug habits due to the extent of his hypocrisy: as education secretary, he imposed a lifetime ban for teachers caught using drugs. Leadsom underperformed compared to opinion polling of party rank and file; she may have popularity issues among her peers in Parliament. Boris is not as inevitable as the first round suggests, as he received only 36% of the total, another candidate might surge as others drop out, and his propensity for gaffes and bigoted remarks offers latitude for a "June surprise". But he is surely the runaway favorite to lead his party—and Britain—into Brexit. Read the rest