A toxic mix of voter suppression and dark money infusions has allowed Republicans to seize power at the state level across America, producing a series of living labs where their… Read the rest of the article: Republicans destroyed Oklahoma with billionaire/corporate tax cuts and got killed in the following election
Toys R Us was taken over in a debt-loading act of financial engineering in 2005; over the years, despite turning a profit, the service on that debt dragged Toys R… Read the rest of the article: Guillotine watch: The executives who bankrupted Toys R Us this year want $16M-$32M in bonuses for their performance
Carbohydrate whisperer Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin (AKA @thePieous) (previously), author of Pies Are Awesome Vol 1 "Pie-Modding": How to Epic-Up Store Bought Pies and Be the Hero of the Party" writes… Read the rest of the article: Bake: hand-pies with three-dimensional decorations
Viennese artist Klemens Schillinger created these "Substitute Phones" as fidget toys with kinetic worry-beads that you can stroke and fondle when your conditioned reflex to reach for a distraction rectangle… Read the rest of the article: A smartphone-shaped fidget-gadget to soothe your instinctive need for stimulus
Presidio Terrace is a private, gated street in San Francisco that has housed the likes of Nancy Pelosi and the UK Consul General; their neighborhood association failed to notify the… Read the rest of the article: San Francisco Board of Supervisors rules that if you're rich enough to own a private sidewalk, you don't have to worry about overdue taxes
"Taking away #NetNeutrality is the Authoritarian dream. Consolidating information into the hands of a few controlled by a few. Dangerous territory". @MarkRuffalo; Ajit Pai: "These comments are absurd. Getting rid… Read the rest of the article: The Credible Hulk: Ajit Pai thinks you only care about Net Neutrality because Mark Ruffalo told you to
From screenprinter Directfraction, Fully Automated Luxury Communism (hipster coffee-shop logo version), and Marx/Misfits. (via Fully Automated Luxury Communism)
Comcast fought the last net neutrality regulation in 2015 by making a bunch of promises about how fair it would be, whether or not the FCC regulated its behavior; this… Read the rest of the article: Comcast flushed its 3 year old net neutrality promise down the memory hole the instant the FCC announced its plan to allow network discrimination
From the delightful R Stevens of Diesel Sweeties fame, a pair of excellent enamel pins: Computers Professional ($11.33) and I want to believe in RSS ($11.55).
We just bought a house here in Burbank and I was delighted to learn that my new home office — part of a business incorporated in the state of California… Read the rest of the article: Net Neutrality is just for starters: municipal networks are the path to paradise
Pan Pan is a panda who was rescued from starvation in the wild when he was a cub, in 1986. Since then, he has gone on to father 120 of… Read the rest of the article: A panda who was "really, really, ridiculously good at sex" brought the species back from the brink of extinction, but things are still weird
As vulture capitalists and profiteers circle the devastation in America's hurricane-struck island colonies, the Trump administration has nothing for them but more loans to pile onto their existing, crippling debt… Read the rest of the article: Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren introduce a bill to provide $146B in aid to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands
The first time I interacted with the US medical system was when I was a student at Michigan State University with a comprehensive travel insurance package my bank sold me… Read the rest of the article: Incentives matter: America's for-profit medical industry thrives on massive wastage, unnecessary procedures, overbilling and overtreating
Chris Vickery from Upguard found an Army Amazon Web Services instance with no password or encryption, containing 100GB of data on a defunct NSA program called Red Disk.
Dissident economic statistician Matt Bruenig (previously) has parsed the latest numbers from the Survey of Consumer Finances, and brings us the news of the increased democratization of student debt: in… Read the rest of the article: Student debt: more people, paying more money, and mounting year on year
It's one thing to pull off a successful fraud online, it's another thing to get away with it — when crooks order merchandise with stolen credit cards or make withdrawals… Read the rest of the article: Europol warns us not top be suckered into serving as "money mules"
During Roy Moore's judicial bouts — punctuated by frequent removals from the bench for gross misconduct — he was part of the mass incarceration wave in America, which has resulted… Read the rest of the article: Mass incarceration and disenfranchisement of brown people was the key to GOP control in Alabama, but thanks to criminal justice reform, black people can vote against child-molester Roy Moore
Morgan Stanley is one of the world's largest banks, so naturally it has racked up a long list of frauds, crimes, and misdemeanors, which it has emerged from largely unscathed,… Read the rest of the article: Morgan Stanley, with a long rapsheet for corporate crimes, says Jeremy Corbyn holding them to account would hurt them worse than the worst Brexit
Dan from the Journal of Ride Theory sez, "This is great. Conducting an interview while this cartoonishly expressive, hyperrealistic Lincoln silently pulls cray-cray Jim Carrey faces is simultaneously one of… Read the rest of the article: Putting a super-advanced Lincolnbot through his paces
In 1995, Penn and Teller released Desert Bus, the worst game ever made, a "VeriSimulator" that challenged you to keep a bus moving between the white lines on an eight-hour… Read the rest of the article: Penn and Teller's Desert Bus, the worst videogame ever made, gets a VR reboot
