The newest sci-fi spectacular that is Dennis Villeneuve's Dune might not include David Lynch's battle pugs, but it does include some startling similarities with the original 1984 film.

A man in Doral, FL, fled from a Bath and Body Works at the Miami International Mall loaded with candles and trailing bear repellent spray.

According to police spokesperson Rey Valdes, at least 15 of the 30 people affected by the spray were Bath and Body Works employees, and all of them would require treatment for their injuries. One employee was rushed to the hospital after receiving a direct hit of the spray to the face. According to Valdes, the man is "potentially looking at 30 to 35 felonies."

The suspect was las seen leaving the mall in a taxi, and his identity is still unknown.

A professional bodybuilder is no match for this professional arm wrestler as she takes him down again, and again, and again. Just goes to show, it's less about brawn, and more about brain (plus years of experience and impeccable technique).

Since the alleged rape of staffer Brittany Higgins in the office of then-defense minister Linda Reynolds, Australia's parliament has released documents seeking an organization to "deliver training to promote a safe and respectful workplace." The problem with this potential training is that it probably won't happen until September of this year, not to mention that the training will be optional to MPs, and will last an hour at most.

Parliamentarians will, potentially, complete a one-hour, face-to-face session with chiefs of staff and office managers. Junior staff, on the other hand, will mostly like need to attend a mandatory two-hour session.

By the end of the session, managers and MPs should be able to understand "behaviours [that] do or do not constitute assault, sexual assault, sexual harassment and serious and systemic bullying and harassment".

They should also be able to understand workplace health and safety obligations as an employer and what is needed to "provide a safe and respectful workplace".

via ABC

Those who will be administering the training have been asked to prepare for a general lack of knowledge regarding occupational health and safety, sexual harassment, and reporting incidents. Trainers will need to deliver their lessons in ways that are "engaging, non-judgmental and sensitive to dynamics in the room".

"Finance offers induction and ongoing training and support to parliamentarians and … employees in relation to their work, health and safety obligations," a spokesperson said. "These training modules include workplace bullying and harassment and guidance on sexual harassment."

via ABC

The spokesperson's statement noted that the training was a response to a recommendation from the Foster Report that was designed to offer parliamentarians the tools to properly handle unacceptable behavior.

(Image: Thennicke, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

A company in the Netherlands is utilizing what would otherwise be wasted food to create vegan leather. Fruitleather receives free leftover mangoes from the quality control sector of a Dutch fruit company and breaks it down to a puree to be turned into a durable, cruelty-free leather alternative.

This old greyhound can't give chase like he used to—but loves to watch the new kids.

This obviously very inebriated gentleman had it out with his parents through their Ring security camera. It seems he shouldn't have been drinking, but that's not stopping him from committing the ultimate sin of setting the thermostat to 62°.

A new scheme is being dished out by Colombian drug dealers to play on the ragged environmental heartstrings of wealthy UK residents. What some are calling "woke coke" is being marketed as "ethically sourced" and "environmentally friendly", but that's far from the truth, according to Colombian aid worker Bibiana Villota:

"I've never heard of woke coke but I can tell you, no one in Colombia produces cocaine 'ethically'.

"The trade inevitably involves bloodshed, the destabilisation of communities and an appalling cycle of violence. If demand goes up, so does production and the cycle of destruction continues. What you call fair trade cocaine is only going to bring more greed and bloodshed."

via NZ Herald

This new gimmick has increased the already "obscene" amount of cash generated by the UK's cocaine trade, which already rakes in nearly $5B annually.

Drug policy expert Neil Woods commented:

 "I have been shown ads for 'environmentally friendly sniff' but it's nothing but a very clever marketing ploy. At £200 [$435] a gram, I call it the 'woke coke con'," he said.

via NZ Herald

We're told from a very young age not to judge a book by its cover. That's all well and good until you're presented with something that is so visually upsetting that it puts even the most classic of classic sci-fi stories into new, terrifying, and disappointing light. Welcome to r/badscificovers, where you too can be accosted by some of the most confusing attempts at literary illustration to ever grace the bookshelf.

Some of the work is so bad it's good, like this cover of Strange Relations by Philip Jose Farmer, or Warworld Volume III by Jerry Pournelle.

Others seem to be intentionally bad, as if they were put together using MS Paint, or by someone who had a very bad experience with Roald Dahl.

If you feel like looking for a certain period of bad sci-fi art, you can sort by decade, or if you're feeling a little randy, you can check the definitely not a penis, boobies ( • )( • ), or star whores flairs. This flair-happy hub of horrible design can and will titillate the masochistic art critic that lives in all of us.

Attorney General Gurbir Grewal issued a formal apology to New Jersey residents on Tuesday for the state's decades long efforts to quash LGBTQ bars.

These efforts spanned over three decades, from 1933 to 1967, using the state's liquor licensing division to seek out and close down gay bars. Attorney General Grewal called that period of time, "an ugly moment in the history of the New Jersey Attorney General's Office." The 126 enforcement actions that affected these facilities will be revoked in order "to right this historical wrong," said Grewal. Records of these violations are now available on these state's website.

To no one's surprise, prejudices have affected gay and queer spaces across the Unites States for decades, and while some facilities could lean on the mafia and other organized crime families, it wasn't always the safest route.

In 1938, for example, the owner of Newark's Log Cabin Inn was accused of allowing "female impersonators and persons of ill repute" into the establishment. In 1941, another bar was written up due to the presence of "a group of men whose voices, gestures and actions were effeminate," and who acted in a manner "entirely inconsistent with the normal conduct of men."

via Huffington Post

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy acknowledged that the state "cannot undo the injustices of the past, today's action by Attorney General Grewal demonstrates our commitment to recognizing the harms that have been suffered and acting to provide support to New Jersey's LGBTQ+ residents."

The state has also begun an evaluation of its liquor licensing division. James Graziano, who oversees the licensing, also acknowledge and condemned "the harm our agency caused to members of the LGBTQ+ community," and offered "sincere apologies to the generations of individuals impacted by it." 

In North Carolina, children as young as 6 years old can be prosecuted in juvenile court, the lowest age set by law in the United States, but a bipartisan effort is working to raise the minimum age of delinquency to a whopping 10 years old. The minimum age was originally set in 1979, when the state viewed the juvenile justice system as a sort of assistance program for kids and their parents.

Between 2016 to 2019, state residents filed over 2100 complaints against 1150 children under 10 years old. According to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, a disproportionate amount of black children were accused of wrongdoing, and while the state says no children under 10 were actually put behind bars, racial justice groups and local lawmakers say that simply having to appear in court can cause long lasting harm to the children.

"The likelihood of them lacking legal capacity is so high and the potential for real identity development damage is also really high," said Barbara Fedders, director of the Youth Justice Clinic at the University of North Carolina School of Law. "It just feels like we are doing them all a disservice if we can't find a better way to deal with these issues than prosecution."

via AP

Fedders' clinic assisted in a case in 2014 involving a 6 year old black child in Raleigh who had thrown a rock at a vacant apartment window. The boy confessed his actions to the police officer who arrived at the scene, and was subsequently brought into court twice, forcing him to miss school. The clinic eventually had the case dismissed, saying that a child under 7 years old was incapable of forming criminal intention.

Former judge and current Democratic State Representative Marcia Morey recalls seeing children in her courtroom, sitting at oversized desks, swinging their feet from their adult-sized chairs, crying as they drew in coloring books. One case in particular involved a trio of 7, 8, and 11 year old children who were brought in for throwing dice against a building in a housing complex in 2010.

"I was just dumbstruck. They brought these kids into court for throwing dice," Morey said.

via AP

Most of the complaints came from school settings, and while more than 43% were dismissed outright, 1/10 of referrals were ultimately resolved in court due to children or parents not meeting obligations such as counseling.

The bill's author, Republican Senator Danny Britt, says the bill will not come to fruition by the end of the year. Dawn Blagrove, executive director of Emancipate NC, supports Britt's bill, but warns that it won't have the impact on systematic racism that lawmakers are hoping for.

"What we are seeing is Republicans finding the easiest, the most innocuous, the least impactful ways to create change to a system that needs massive overhaul without actually disrupting the system," Blagrove said.

via AP

A 62-year-old man contacted the Campbell County Sheriff's Office on June 24 to ask why he hadn't been arrested after deputies had apparently raided his house the previous day. He informed the dispatcher that he had been using meth, and he was surprised he hadn't been arrested. He also told the dispatcher that he was being followed by 10 young men.

According to Undersheriff Quentin Reynolds, there had been no raid at the man's house, and that there were no plans to arrest him.

Shortly after the call, the man was spotted driving and was pulled over by a sheriff's deputy. The man informed the deputy that he was still high from some methamphetamine he'd used a day and a half before. After failing a sobriety test, the man was arrested for driving under the influence of a controlled substance.

[Update 6/30/21 7:11am PT – News reports incorrectly said the woman fled the country. French police captured her and she is in police custody.]

The spectator who caused the monumental pileup during the Tour de France seems to have fled the country. According to Ouest-France, the spectator, thought to be a German woman, has boarded a plane and is currently untraceable.

The deputy director of the Tour de France, Pierre-Yves Thouault, told AFP that they plan to sue the woman "so that the tiny minority of people who do this don't spoil the show for everyone."

The woman was apparently holding up a cardboard sign with a message for her grandparents, according to CBS. The sign blocked part of the road, causing German cyclist Tony Martin to ride right into it, setting off a domino effect for the cyclists behind him.

North Koreans are worried for leader Kim Jong-un, who seems to have lost a considerable amount of weight. State media quoted a resident who commented on Kim's "emaciated looks" in a rare acknowledgement of speculations about his weight loss. Some experts say that the comments are an attempt to boost support for Kim's efforts to remedy the economic hardships caused by the pandemic.

"Our people's hearts ached most when we saw (Kim's) emaciated looks," North Korean state TV cited an unidentified male resident wearing a straw hat as saying on Friday. "Everyone says their tears are welling up in their eyes naturally.

via USA Today

The worry seems to stem from recent state media photos that show a slimmer Kim, who is around 5'8" and roughly 308lbs. Residents speculate that he might have lost anywhere from 22 to 44 pounds. Analysts in Seoul say Kim may have gone on a diet to improve his health (which is under intense scrutiny, as he hasn't publicly appointed a successor in the event of his death).

Seeing as his predecessors (father Kim Jong-il and grandfather Kim Il-sung) both died of heart-related problems, it wouldn't be surprising if the heavy-drinking, heavy-smoking world leader took steps to improve his own health.

Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui allowed alleged insurrectionist Pauline Bauer some vacation time. After spending the night in jail for being found in contempt of court, Bauer returned to make a "divine special appearance" before the judge.

At the hearing on June 21, 2021, Ms. Bauer stated that she was making a "divine special appearance" as a "free living soul" and "a woman."2 Ms. Bauer also cited several passages from religious scripture as the basis for her statements. Ms. Bauer also sought to read a document into the record. The Court accepted the document, indicating that it would enter it into the record but rejected Ms. Bauer's request that she be allowed to read the 37- page document during the hearing. Upon information and belief, that document sets out various references to God, citations to Bible passages, and Constitutional Amendments as the basis for Ms. Bauer's statements to the Court.

via Raw Story

Bauer, who called for the hanging of Nancy Pelosi, will be allowed to drive out to Mount Rushmore to celebrate July 4th with family.

Why would you buy your little fuzzy friend an old fashioned hamster wheel, when you could build a fully functioning, battery operated, adjustable treadmill? It might take longer, but your hamster will probably have a great time.

User u/That_guy_with_1_leg on Reddit was asked what it's like to skate with a prosthetic leg. To explain, he made a video with his blind friend, showing both of them skating… with a prosthetic leg as the skateboard.

User u/PotatoesAndChill has what most people would consider some unwelcome guests in their attic: a hornet's nest. Watch, and be amazed (and potentially nauseated) as the nest's caretaker checks on its squirming, pulsating larvae.

It might seem a little tedious, but it's satisfying to watch the—grime? oxidization?—melt away with the help of what is—probably?—a flamethrower only used for this purpose.

A former Livingston Parish sheriff's deputy and his wife have been exposed as serial perverts and abusers, and together, Dennis and Cynthia Perkins face up to 150 felony charges dating back to 2014. Their crimes include rape, animal abuse, and serving drinks and cupcakes contaminated with semen.

Dennis' 78 felonies include two adults, two minors, and a dog, while Cynthia's own 72 felonies include the same two minors and one of the adults. Most of the offenses relate to only one of the minors, a 13 year old who was the victim of rape, sexual battery, and the production of child porn over the course of several months in 2019. The couple has also been charged with "mingling harmful substances" after it was revealed that Dennis ejaculated onto various pastries and into bottles of energy drinks that were then served to unsuspecting victims.

The couple was arrested back in October, but the Attorney General's Office has been "reluctant to share information on the nature of the alleged offenses, citing the sensitive nature of the investigation and need for privacy."

Dennis was fired from his job at the Sheriff's Office after his arrest. He had been with the office since 2002, and was recently the head of the local SWAT team. Cynthia resigned from her job as a teacher at a local junior high school the day she as arrested. She had been working with the Parish school system since 2009, first as a substitute, then a full-time teacher at both elementary and middle schools.

The Perkins are being held without bail, and their cases will most likely proceed as one through the court system. Dennis' attorney, J David Bourland, is expected to remove himself from his client's case due to an inability to agree on a suitable defense.