Night Stalker dead —

Serial killer and self-professed "satanist" Richard Ramirez is dead at 53, reports the California Department of Corrections. — Rob •

Jonah Lehrer's comeback proposal —

Jonah Lehrer got caught. Jonah Lehrer got a new book deal anyway. Then, Jonah Lehrer got caught again, according to Slate's Daniel Engber: "He’ll recycle and repeat, he’ll puke his gritty guts out." — Rob •

Study: couples who met online more likely to stay together —

Only 7 percent of couples who met online and subsequently married have so far separated or divorced, according to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The divorce rate overall is 40-50 percent. [Marketwatch] — Rob •

The evolution of @ —

John Brownlee on the unlikely evolution of the @ symbol: "Rejuvenated by its insertion before every Twitter handle, the @ symbol today is almost a pronoun. It has a very personal meaning for billions of people across the planet. It’s the symbol that means “digital me.”" — Rob •

Megan Garber at The Atlantic: "An extensive coronal hole rotated toward Earth last week--and astronomers were there to capture it."

The New Yorker points out the obvious implication if leaking to the press is taken as aiding the enemy:

Wikileaks “released” to the public, and in coöperation with other media outlets, not at some Al Qaeda dead drop. Readers of the New York Times, the Guardian, and other publications read it, too, after those outlets made the files not only available but more easily searchable. Perhaps another prosecutor, in this case or the next one, will argue that a defendant should have “understood the nature” of the Times. Or that of The New Yorker. What might it have meant, legally, if a copy of our magazine, bought at a news kiosk in Karachi, was found rolled up on the floor of bin Laden’s complex in Abbottabad? How much are we meant to be judged by what we can guess about the character of our readers?

The backstory: the British government is imposing an unpopular badger cull for questionable reasons.

Heather spotted this remarkably sad ad from Swiffer, aping Westinghouse Electric's classic wartime poster, We Can Do It! Adds Jason: "I love the clear tribute to an important historical image done in such a way as to piss on its legacy."

Discovered in 1957 and hailed as the earliest map of the New World, the Vinland Map charted Norse exploration of the Americas long before Christopher Columbus. After decades of controversy, however, an amateur historian may finally have demonstrated that it is a clever hoax: the map occupies a sheet of parchment that was relatively unremarkable 120 years ago. [Sunday Times, paywalled]

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Actor John Simm sounds fed up with the fans: "I'm not the Master, I'm not that evil Time Lord who rules the galaxy, I'm just in Tesco with my kids. Leave me alone!" [Guardian]

UPDATE: On Twitter, Simm said his remarks were presented out of context by The Radio Times, and that the "interview" was cobbled together from old quotes.

I thought I had amnesia, don't remember doing any of these recent interviews! But of courses they're all over a year old. ... The Radio Times has really done a number on me re. Dr Who 'quote'. Thanks for that! Suffice to say it was taken out of context AGAIN. I haven't done an interview for them for many years, because of this. Nasty, spiteful, trouble causing 'Journalism'. To 'Whovians' or whoever. It's a non story. I always try to be polite to fans and am v. proud of my time in the show. You can choose to believe what you like but I really meant no offence. I've obviously pissed off some bored journalist coz I wouldn't do an interview.

Neil Emmett writes about fake computer graphics, as so often found in 1980s sci-fi movies and TV productions that were as inexpensive as they were ahead of their time.

Primitive digital imagery has had something of a resurgence across the past decade or so, to the point where pastiches of 8-bit pixel graphics have found their way into mainstream productions such as Wreck-It Ralph. Perhaps it is time that the animators and digital artists of today rediscovered the lesser-known cousin of this aesthetic: the strange world of pseudo-CGI.

Meanwhile, in London, badger women pursue fascists —

Right-wing extremists, vastly outnumbered by opposing marchers on the streets of London, gathered Friday to whip up support. Both groups, however, were upstaged by campaigners fighting for a third cause: to stop Britain's brutal and scientifically-questionable badger cull. When the badger women sided against the fascists, writes the International Business Times, they had no-where left to run. — Rob •

Legendary Atari cartridge dump to be excavated —

After producing too many copies of its infamously terrible E.T. game, Atari dumped the unsold inventory in a remote New Mexico landfill. Thirty years on, the local authorities have greenlighted an excavation to see exactly what's down there. [John Bear at The Alamogordo Daily News] — Rob •

The creators of ElfQuest liked my artwork for our interview with them so much, they put it on a T-shirt! You should buy this t-shirt now: secrets from the lost decade will be conferred upon anyone I meet wearing one of them. It's available in coffee, cream and olive (pictured), from S to XXXL. Close-ups of the design (in the form of desktop and tablet wallpapers) are after the jump.

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