The Kindle Unlimited program is $10 a month, and it gives you access to over a million books and comics on Amazon. Amazon is currently offering a deal: 3 months for 99 cents a month. The program includes a lot of popular books: the Harry Potter series, The Handmaid's Tale, the Hunger Games trilogy, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and even comics, like Kelly Sue DeConnick's Captain Marvel and Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Read the rest
I was sure Bezos would have the number one spot in this animated comparison of billionaires' net worth. But $131 billion doesn't cut it.
(I recommend watching the video at double speed. To do that, hover over the YouTube player window, click the gear, then click Playback speed and choose 2X.) Read the rest
Cue "Thus Spoke Zarathustra." We've found Moonwatcher of the feline world.
Cat Scientist from r/likeus
On Tuesday Trump told reporters "I don't know Prince Andrew, but it's a tough story. It's a very tough story."
In 2000 he told People Prince Andrew is “not pretentious. He’s a lot of fun to be with.”
From Business Insider: "Despite the president's claim not to know Andrew, there are numerous photos showing the two men attending functions and chatting together effusively in February 2000 and June 2018."
See also: Here are photos of Trump with Prince Andrew, who he says he does not know Read the rest
In Slate's latest Dear Prudence advice column, a woman writes in to ask if she should tell her husband that a famous comedian he admires (and for whose show he bought tickets for his wife and him to attend) treated her viciously 20 years ago:
“Jake” fell in love with me and reacted very angrily when I told him I’d like to remain friends. He’d lash out if he learned I’d done anything with another friend, and he’d turn vicious if that friend was male. I was always scared of upsetting him, because he had a really awful temper, which our mutual friends always downplayed. I eventually broke off contact after I was nearly raped and Jake told me I deserved it.
She says "'Jake' has become a much beloved public figure in the entertainment industry. He’s 'woke,' challenges people like Louis C.K., and is, as he always was, very funny."
Prudence's advice: "I think you need to tell your husband the truth of your 'friendship' with Jake, and ask that he tell your closest friends whichever version of this story you are comfortable is both true and also protective of your own privacy and emotional well-being."
Image by andresilva5 from Pixabay Read the rest
In a New York Times story titled "I Worked for Alex Jones. I Regret It," Josh Owens recounts his time working as a video producer for InfoWars. He says was a passenger in Jones' car and that Jones drank vodka from a cup while driving, that Jones would challenge people to punching contests and broke a video editor's ribs, and that Jones once fired an AR-15 in his direction, missing him by 10 feet (Jones "claimed he had intentionally fired the gun as a joke," write Owens.) He also describes the time Jones tried to kill an American Bison with a pistol:
Read the restOne weekend, a few people from the office went hunting at a game reserve. On the following Monday, I was handed a hard drive full of video files and told to edit them for Jones to air on his show later in the week. “There are clips in here that are pretty bad, things we don’t want to get out, so let me take a look at this before we upload it,” one of my managers said.
The first video I clicked on came from a cellphone. The camera pans across a blood-covered floor in what looked like a garage. Dead animals were scattered about: eyes lifeless, tongues hanging from their mouths, crimson streaks splashed on their fur.
In another video, a bison grazed quietly in the shade of a large tree; it reminded me of a tableau at the American Museum of Natural History. Then the camera panned over to Jones, maybe 20 yards away, holding what looked like a handgun.
I was looking at photos of Chigasaki, Japan in Google Images when I saw a photo a smiling man with what looked to be a huge pink bump on his shoulder. I clicked for a closer look and learned that he is a katsugite, a person who helps carry one-ton Shinto shrines supported on wooden poles. The bump was a callus from bearing the load of the shrine.
SoraNews24 has an article about katsugite and their mikoshi dako.
There’s no mistaking what causes these shoulder calluses, given that they’re known in Japanese as “Mikoshi Dako“, or “Mikoshi Calluses“. Just as players of stringed instruments develop lumps of hard skin on their fingers from years of practice, these mikoshi carriers develop bulges on their shoulders, which actually help to reduce the pain of carrying the portable shrine due to the build-up of hardened skin.
Rather than hide the large lumps on their shoulders, however, the men who have them wear them as a badge of pride; as a symbol of their unwavering dedication to the deity, the shrine and the larger community itself.
Mikoshi Dako. Large callouses that people get from carrying portable shrines and festival floats. pic.twitter.com/1jFphb2Y7y
— Kansai Photos (@KansaiPhotos) July 9, 2019
Until now, Pinterest and The Knot (an online wedding-planning platform) actively promoted former slave plantations as great places to get married. It took pressure from a civil rights advocacy group called Color of Change to convince them to stop.
From Buzzfeed News:
The Knot Worldwide, which owns the Knot and WeddingWire, is currently working on new guidelines to ensure wedding vendors on their websites don’t use language that glorifies, celebrates, or romanticizes Southern plantation history, chief marketing officer Dhanusha Sivajee told BuzzFeed News.
Although plantations will still be able to list themselves as venues, Sivajee said the new guidelines are meant to ensure that wedding vendors aren’t referring to plantations using language such as “elegant" or “charming."
From a letter sent by Color of Change to The Knot:
Read the restThe decision to glorify plantations as nostalgic sites of celebration is not an empowering one for the Black women and justice-minded people who use your site/ Plantations are physical reminders of one of the most horrific human rights abuses the world has ever seen. The wedding industry routinely denies the violent conditions Black people faced under chattel slavery by promoting plantations as romantic places to marry.
Even after I vanquished Calamity Gannon in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild over a year ago, I'm still playing it. I have tons of side quests to complete, a few more shrines to clear, and a bushel of Korok seeds to find. It is my favorite video game, and if you haven't played it yet, I'm envious of the experience in store for you. Right now, the digital version for the Switch is only , which is the lowest price I've seen for it. Read the rest
While a Los Angeles police officer is enjoying his paid leave (officially called "being assigned to home duty" lol) as he's being investigated for fondling a corpse, he's got time to wonder why simply turning off his body cam wasn't enough to prevent recording his actions. ABC 7 news in LA has the answer: "the cameras used by the department have a video buffering that saves footage going back for two minutes prior to the recording function being activated." Oops.
From ABC 7:
The officer with Central Division had gone with a partner to a death investigation at a home. During the investigation at one point, the officer's partner had left the room.
Sources say the officer turned off the recording on his body camera and then lifted the sheet off the woman's body and allegedly began feeling her nipples and fondling her breasts.
He later turned the body camera recording back on. But the cameras used by the department have a video buffering that saves footage going back for two minutes prior to the recording function being activated.
Photo By Ryan Johnson - https://www.flickr.com/photos/northcharleston/25763393046, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52373022, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66137169 Read the rest
Hopefully you won't find yourself in a situation where you'll have to see if the "wipe away the flame" technique demonstrated here really works.
Image: LiveLeak Read the rest
"So if you're poor, you're dead." That's what a woman in the U.K. said when she was told the price of health care services in the U.S.
No doubt many people in the U.S. do die from the high price of health care, but the ones who survive but can't pay their bills are likely to be sued by the hospital.
Ambulance call out? $2,500. Childbirth? $30,000.
Our NHS is not for sale, @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/q9z4r6Ni6g
— PoliticsJOE (@PoliticsJOE_UK) December 3, 2019
Costing just on Amazon, this small sewing kit contains everything you need to make minor repairs to clothing. The only other thing you'll need is access to YouTube, so you can learn how to sew on a button, mend a tear, or repair a small hole. Read the rest
A woman was taken into protective custody for pretending she was experiencing a breathing problem in order to get a bigger seat on an American Airlines flight from Pensacola to Miami, reports NBC News.
The pilot decided to turn the plan around and landed in Pensacola. When the plane landed, the woman refused to get off and admitted she'd lied. Everyone else on the plane deboarded, and the woman remained as the sole passenger. Authorities eventually talked her into leaving. Once she exited, she was taken into protective custody.
From NBC News:
"American Eagle 3508 returned to Pensacola due to a passenger who requested medical assistance," American Airlines said in a statement to NBC News on Friday. "The flight took off at 5:43 a.m. and landed back at Pensacola at 6:26 a.m. and taxied to the gate. All [passengers] deplaned normally at the gate through the main boarding door and onto the jet bridge. The passenger was subsequently removed by law enforcement and medical personnel, and the flight took off again at 7:41 a.m."
Photo by Patrick Cardinal - originally posted to Flickr as American Airlines Boeing 737-800, CC BY 2.0, Link Read the rest
New flash: Trump has been caught lying. Currently in the U.K., Trump (a pal of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein) was asked about Prince Andrew (another pal of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein), and he replied: “I don’t know Prince Andrew, but it’s a tough story, it’s a very tough story.”
NY Magazine has three photos of Trump with Andrew dating back to 2000.
The Washington Post reports that Trump and Prince Andrew had a breakfast meeting in June:
Trump says he doesn’t know Britain’s Prince Andrew.
They had a breakfast meeting in June. https://t.co/iuEsrHbUKx pic.twitter.com/Gxr2NdTB1x
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 3, 2019
The Daily Beast also has numerous photos of Trump and the Prince:
Trump denies knowing Prince Andrew, despite numerous photos of them together including with Jeffrey Epstein https://t.co/M2G02kJv7Q
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) December 3, 2019
Trump just said "I don't know Prince Andrew, but that's a tough story, it's a very tough story, I don't know"
Here he is not knowing him at Westminster Abbey, taking a nice stroll on a separate occasion he didn't know him and finally not knowing him whilst partying with Epstein. pic.twitter.com/wpVoVdfwBn
— James Felton (@JimMFelton) December 3, 2019
Image of Prince Andrew: By Northern Ireland Office - https://www.flickr.com/photos/niogovuk/14649728080/, CC BY 2.0, Link. Image of Trump: By Shealah Craighead - White House, Public Domain, Link Read the rest
In 1951 the United States government passed a law requiring all men between the ages of 18 to 26 to register for the draft. During the Korean War (1950-1953) 80,000 men attempted to dodge the draft. During the Vietnam War (1955 - 1975) over 570,000 men dodged the draft, 210,000 of them were formally accused, and 3,250 were imprisoned. (Side note, 58,000 US soldiers died in the Vietnam War, over 1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters died, and an estimated 2 million civilians died.)
This video looks at some of the ways men avoided the draft. They include moving to Canada, failing physical exams on purpose, becoming missionaries, or, as claimed in a 1977 interview with alt-right demigod Ted Nugent, taking drugs, acting insane, and urinating and defecating on himself before appearing for his examination (Nugent later said lied in the interview).
Image by: Lance Cpl. Danielle Prentice. Public Domain Read the rest
The New York Post reports Indiana police are on the lookout for Donald Murray, 38, after he allegedly fled officers in his car when they tried to pull him over for driving without turning on the car's exterior lights at night.
