The founders of German National Socialist fan-site "The Daily Stormer" were ordered to pay $14MM in damages for being trollish assholes.

NBC

The founder and editor of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer should be ordered to pay more than $14 million to a Montana real estate agent against whom he organized an anti-Semitic "troll storm," a federal magistrate judge found on Monday.

The judgment was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Missoula, Montana, against Andrew Anglin, who encouraged the online intimidation campaign against Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent in the Montana resort town of Whitefish, her husband and their 12-year-old son.

In an opinion that must still be approved by U.S. District Judge Dana L. Christensen, the magistrate judge, Jeremiah C. Lynch, recommended a default judgment against Anglin, who failed to appear for a deposition in April.

But Lynch went further than finding for Gersh on procedural grounds: He recommended that Christensen order Anglin, who is in his mid-30s, to pay $4,042,438 in compensatory damages and $10 million, the maximum under state law, in punitive damages for "the particularly egregious and reprehensible nature of Anglin's conduct."

Writing about these guys the first time got me a lot of unwanted late night phonecalls. Read the rest

A few years ago bad dealmaking with the park concessionaire cost the National Parks Service the names of Yosemite's famous Ahwahnee Hotel, The Wawona Hotel and Curry Village. Restoring the historic names to the historic properties cost the American taxpayer $12,000,000 and legal fees.

CNN:

The Ahwahnee was renamed the Majestic Yosemite Hotel after the park's former concessionaire filed a lawsuit against the National Park Service in September 2015, claiming ownership of some of the park's trade names and trademarks.

The Ahwahnee Hotel became The Majestic Yosemite Hotel. The Wawona Hotel became Big Trees Lodge. Curry Village became Half Dome Village. And Badger Pass Ski Area was renamed Yosemite Ski & Snowboard Area.

As part of a $12 million settlement signed July 15 and paid to the park's former concessionaire, names that had been changed during the lawsuit will revert to their original names.

#Vanlife would be intolerable without coffee. This GSI Glacier series 30oz 'java' press is my new best friend.

I transition back and forth from tea to coffee and spent most of the last year pounding shots of espresso. Upon moving into my VW Vanagon camper for the summer I forgot to pack either. After one day on the road my daughter, who is a mere 12-years-old, made the observation that I am a lot meaner and less fun to be around without the caffeine.

An exgirlfriend declared my old press "no good" and threw it away after trying to brew loose tea in it. It had been used for coffee for years and was of course, not good for tea.

Tea is lovely but it doesn't get the job done when camping. This 30oz french press does. I'm currently drinking pre-ground Trader Joe's medium roast, but when it is gone I'm thinking Illy or Lavazza. I used to hand grind beans when camping but the fuck if I have time for that now.

This GSI insulated press is just the right size for me to brew a pot and drink it as I get my work done in the morning. The coffee stays hot for the 3-4 hours I am working, and always seems to be empty just when I am done typing away.

Praise the press.

GSI Outdoors - Glacier Stainless JavaPress, 30oz Camping French Press via Amazon Read the rest

Mountain Dew made a place in the market by tasting like crap and having more caffeine than a handful of No-Doz. The flavors are all "SUGAR." They are nearly indistinguishable to an over 8-year-old palate. This new Dew, however, is for gamers and has a resealable lid because angry young men like to conserve!

That said, this dude at Kotaku seems to know his Mountain Dew:

That fancy resealable lid is a real pain in the ass to open. The directions are simple, but actually getting it to pop open was annoying and felt poorly designed for people with bigger hands or fingers. After struggling for far too long, I finally got it to pop open and my hand was covered in Game Fuel. It wasn’t a great experience. And then I finally tasted Game Fuel.

I should say before I explain how awful this stuff tastes, that I drink a lot of energy drinks and used to drink a lot of soda. I like Mountain Dew, even if I avoid it these days to save my teeth. I even liked some of the Game Fuel flavors that existed years ago. I also have enjoyed Mountain Dew Kickstart and Black Label. I say all this to assure you that I am very well acquainted to overly sweet, sort of bitter and a little too dry sodas and soft drinks.

Electrek.co test rode the Hardly-Dangerous 'Livewire' electric bike. Read the rest

The breakneck pace of mods, changes, and additions to Fortnite did not slow over the last few weeks! There are now drum shotguns, storms-in-a-bottle, and the wildly fun airstrike!

Call in a rain of rockets and watch people run in a panic! Read the rest

This Mad Mats rug keeps sticks, dirt, burrs and other garbage out of my dog's fur and out of my camper!

6'x9' and awfully stylish, I've had this rug since 2013 and it looks as good as new. Excellent for throwing down just outside the door of my VW Vanagon, under our pop-up shade, or right next to the picnic table where I am cooking and working.

When you spend a lot of time with your dogs in the outdoors, anything that helps keep them a little cleaner, and make life seem a little more luxuriant, is welcome. Like getting nice furniture in your prison cell!

There are other styles, pick the one you love!

Mad Mats Oriental Turkish Indoor/Outdoor Floor Mat, 6 by 9-Feet, Rust via Amazon Read the rest

The LEGO Steamboat Willie is absolutely darling.

Based on the legendary animation that introduced us to Mickey Mouse, the Steamboat Willie can be yours!

It also comes with black and white Mickey and Minnie minifigs. A Minnie-fig??!

LEGO Ideas 21317 Disney Steamboat Willie Building Kit , New 2019 (751 Piece) via Amazon Read the rest

Much like the "War on Drugs," no one won the Cola Wars.

In 1975 Pepsi started a blind taste test called 'The Pepsi Challenge' the idea was to show folks enjoying Pepsi far more than Coca-Cola, and thus steal Coke's customers.

WAR.

Coke abandoned its peaceful methods of attracting customers, like teaching folks to sing about the unifying joys of sweet soda, and started to play on our patriotism.

Thus a massive escalation began, and the Cola Wars destroyed society. Many commercials were flighted, many lives were destroyed, and teeth. Those sugary drinks are bad for your teeth!

Now look where we are:

Read the rest

Came for the classic BMWs, stayed for the fun.

(Thanks, Airheads!) Read the rest

Acting legend Rip Torn always sounded like someone I'd want to hang out with.

The Hollywood Reporter:

Torn was an "actor's actor," but he had a reputation as a trouble-maker.

Legend has it that he was all set for Jack Nicholson's career-making role in Easy Rider (1969) before things went awry. Dennis Hopper, the film's director, said years later on The Tonight Show that Torn had pulled a knife on him in a diner, costing him the job. Torn said it was Hopper that pulled the knife on him and sued for libel, winning $475,000 in damages.

In an improvised fight seen in Maidstone (1970), Torn attacked actor-director Norman Mailer with a tack hammer; Mailer then bit into Torn's ear during the ensuing scrum. The Criterion Collection described the movie as being "shot over the course of five drug-fueled days in East Hampton, New York."

An Army veteran, Torn was also an outspoken activist.

After Torn met with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in an attempt to start an integrated national theater in 1963, he was targeted by the FBI and found trouble finding work in major motion pictures. "I began to see things in gossip columns, stories about me," he once said.

In 1970, on the day after Torn spoke out against the Vietnam War on The Dick Cavett Show, a bullet was fired through the window of his Manhattan home.

I have certainly made this mistake and had to rush bad to my starting to roll car. It has not gotten away from me, however. Read the rest

Peter Beinart has written a piece for The Atlantic that uses the measles epidemic as a pretty good example of what is happening to our society as a whole.

Our amnesia about vaccines is part of a broader forgetting. Prior generations of Americans understood the danger of zero-sum economic nationalism, for instance, because its results remained visible in their lifetimes. When Al Gore debated Ross Perot about NAFTA in 1993, he reminded the Texan businessman of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which raised tariffs on 20,000 foreign products—prompting other countries to retaliate, deepening the Great Depression, and helping to elect Adolf Hitler. But fewer and fewer people remember the last global trade war. Similarly, as memories of Nazism fade across Europe and the United States, anti-Semitism is rising. Technology may improve; science may advance. But the fading of lessons that once seemed obvious should give pause to those who believe history naturally bends toward progress.

Declining vaccination rates not only reflect a great forgetting; they also reveal a population that suffers from overconfidence in its own amateur knowledge. In her book Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines, the University of Colorado at Denver’s Jennifer Reich notes that starting in the 1970s, alternative-health movements “repositioned expertise as residing within the individual.” This ethos has grown dramatically in the internet age, so much so that “in arenas as diverse as medicine, mental health, law, education, business, and food, self-help or do-it-yourself movements encourage individuals to reject expert advice or follow it selectively.” Autodidacticism can be valuable.

IGN tells us a movie about Jesus Quintana, The Jesus, is coming to the big screen.

A spinoff of The Big Lebowski called Jesus Rolls and starring John Turturro himself has been confirmed for a 2020 release date by Screen Media, according to ComicBook. The movie is being written and directed by Turturro and will tell a new story that features his classic character of Jesus Quintana and what he's been up to in the time following The Big Lebowski.

As rumored previously after the Stella Artois commercial that premiered during the 2019 Super Bowl, this is not a sequel to The Big Lebowski, and both Jeff Bridges and John Goodman will not be in the movie, nor will the Coen Brothers have any hand in the production, although they did give Turturro permission to use his character in a spinoff movie.

The handling of this character will be interesting, based on the original film 'The Jesus' is a registered sex offender.

In a statement, Turturro said, "It feels like a good time to release a transgressive film about the stupidity of men who try and fail and try better to understand and penetrate the mystery of women. I look forward to working with Screen Media and bring our work and the character of the Jesus to American audiences.”

Insane Clown Posse fandom has some pretty jazzy membership benefits.

Consequence of Sound:

It turns out that Juggalos face makeup cannot be accurately read by many facial recognition technologies. Most common programs identify areas of contrast — like those around the eyes, nose, and chin — and then compare those points to images within a database. The black bands frequently used in Juggalo makeup obscure the mouth and cover the chin, totally redefining a person’s key features.

Continuing to climb in the polls, and our hearts, Elizabeth Warren delivers some impressive fundraising numbers.

NPR:

The momentum translated to fundraising. Warren took in $19.1 million in April, May and June — more than three times what her campaign raised during the first quarter of 2019, according to her campaign Monday.

The fundraising total is about $1 million more than Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders raised, and about $7 million more than California Sen. Kamala Harris' second-quarter total.

Bernie Sanders attends the Fourth of July parade in Pella, Iowa. In polls and fundraising, Sanders is starting to be surpassed by fellow progressive Elizabeth Warren.

Warren's second-quarter fundraising trails only former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, both of whom devoted considerable time to attending high-dollar fundraisers across the country. Warren, by contrast, has made the unusual move of forgoing fundraising events.

Puddles may be the soundtrack to my soul.

Evidently, this song was written for Puddles by Andrew Quinn, they may be working on more music together. I hope so! Read the rest