Shopping precincts are often privately-owned public spaces, and sometimes one's rights there are unclear. In enclosed malls, though, like the one in this video, it's perhaps best to stop filming when asked. On the other hand, it's definitely best not to threaten and assault someone who refuses to do so, and this angry mall cop might have some explaining to do to the real ones.

While it's true the shopper is unmasked (or removes his mask during the confrontation) that's clearly not what the mall cop is mad about.

BONUS: we're in Scotland.

Ah just knock it out yer hand a wee bit, aye?

UPDATE: It's the Kingsgate shopping center in Dunfermline. They're taking the shopper's compaint "very seriously".

"We acknowledge the actions by members of our security team falls below the high standards of professionalism expected by us and our customers…" wrote Neil Mackie, manager of the shopping center, in a statement. "The act of producing video or still images, is prohibited under Home Office guidance in privately owned places open to the general public and this is clearly stated at every entrance to the Kingsgate Shopping Centre. However, it appears we failed to communicate this in an appropriate manner to Mr Newton."

"Would it be funny if I fuckin knocked you out, aye?"

Maskalike takes a photo of your chops and sends you an exactingly-color balanced face mask, carefully distorted with software so that it looks just wrong. It's appallingly realistic, landing in an unsettling glen deep in the uncanny valley.

Note: if you want the "chin masker" illusion, reply to your order confirmation after placing the order so we know to add it.

A girl will not get Covid.

Previously:

Ultra-realistic face masks on sale, in Japan

The entire staff of the Nevada Democratic Party quit after progressives beat the [Harry] "Reid Machine" in party elections.

Not long after Judith Whitmer won her election on Saturday to become chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, she got an email from the party's executive director, Alana Mounce. The message from Mounce began with a note of congratulations, before getting to her main point. She was quitting. So was every other employee. And so were all the consultants. And the staff would be taking severance checks with them, thank you very much.

On March 6, a coalition of progressive candidates backed by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America took over the leadership of the Nevada Democratic Party, sweeping all five party leadership positions in a contested election that evening

Why are Dems like this? Because the Democratic Party treats power as an end in itself, to be used as little as possible, rather than as a means to accomplish policy goals. When Dems win, the most exciting outcome is the changing of the guard, the assigning of the status quota to those who have earned it. Which is to say: a job fair.

Dems cannot really tolerate progressives and democratic socialists, in the end, because those people aren't in the party for the job fair. Sadly, the job fair is the party.

When these staffers knew the job fair wasn't happening, they abandoned the base instantly. No other reason to stay, no better reason to go.

Surrounded by pygmy goats, hens and a puppy, this enormous dog simply watches it all go by.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Monsanto) has no interest in being creamed by whoever the Trump cult runs against him in 2022's primary and will retire when his term is up. He is the fifth Republican Senator to announce his departure.

Blunt, 71, has been a mainstay in Washington politics and the Republican establishment for more than two decades. First elected to the House in the 1996 GOP wave, Blunt served as House Republican whip before jumping to the Senate. In announcing his retirement, Blunt joins GOP Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Richard Shelby of Alabama and Richard Burr of North Carolina, all of whom opted against seeking reelection in 2022. Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have yet to reveal their plans.

It's vanishingly unlikely Blunt's Missouri seat could go to a Democrat, but if his replacement is exceptionally mad things might get interesting.

Frank Thorne, the legendary comic book artist most famed for his work reviving Red Sonja in the 1970s, is dead at 90. Former DC Comics president Paul Levitz writes:

Bidding farewell to Frank Thorne, an artist who progressively developed his style into a more and more personal expression. I had the pleasure of working with Frank in his later DC days, when he did some magnificent work for the mystery titles, and stepped in to pencil for Jim Aparo on The Spectre, matching his storytelling approach carefully to Jim's.

But Frank had the best time of his career on Marvel's Red Sonja, who he made both powerful and sexy," he continued. "He was probably the first working mainstream [artist] to revel in [cosplay], becoming the Wizard who acted with Wendy Pini's Sonja at show after show. A man of talent, charm and great wit. Good journey onward, Frank, you will be long remembered.

At 11 years old, my new Commodore Amiga blew my mind. But even I could tell that the firmware screen when you turned it on was, quote, "badly drawn". It turns out (as such things often do) that it is in fact an amazing feat of digital art made for an in-development machine long before it had drawing applications, plotted with vectors on graph paper and punched in as 412 bytes of machine code.

Here's the legendary graphic's creator, Sheryl Knowles:

We did every single illustration in the manuals, every "show it off" illustration that appeared in magazines or trade shows, and every practical graphic (i.e. the icons and fonts), pixel by pixel, with no tools other than being able to choose a color and place the pixel. No line tools. No fills. No shape tools. Two: We had no way to save our art work. So once designed, it had to go straight to the programmers to be coded in. I used a LOT of graph paper. Or, if it was an illustration, we had to photograph our screens and send that photo to the publisher needing it. Believe me, once Graphicraft was done, our jobs were so very much easier!

Danielle Baskin's unfortunately.io generates rejection letters to companies seeking capital—perfect for busy angels or bankers with better things to do. [via]

Bleeptrack and Blinry's Oh My Git! is a game about using Git, the popular version control system that developers use to organize and manage their projects. You can download it free of charge on itch.io for Windows, Linux and MacOS. The game's source is, of course, open and ready for you to check out.

Oh My Git! is an open source game that introduces players to the popular version control system "Git". It is highly interactive, and aims at building intuition for operations like "merging" or "rebasing" branches. Players are guided through the features of Git step by step – each level tells a little story where the player can use their new-found powers to solve problems or help others.

Importantly,

Wait, is this a real Git?

Yes, Oh My Git! uses real Git repositories for each level. It is important to us that Git beginners have a real-life experience while playing. Also we want to give more experienced Git users all the power they would have when using Git in their productive environment.

Dos.Zone is an interactive database of DOS games, many of which you can fire up and play right in the browser; see also the Internet Archive's MS-DOS software library.

There are many types of vintage graph sheets (not "paper"), and this video offers a tour of a fantastic book of samples.

A sampling of graph papers included in the Keuffel & Esser company (K+E) catalog, 42nd edition, 1960.

Ebay is an occasional source of treasure; specialists remain, but without the same elan; you may have to make do with the graph paper generator and your own printer.

In the annals of social media goatfucking, few have pounded it quite as hard as whoever is currently at the helm of Burger King's UK twitter account. After posting "Women belong in the kitchen" they are now tweeting through it, desperately reiterating missing context and insisting that the glib missive was part of an ironic call for empowerment.

Burger King UK appears much angrier at critics than it is at the sexists delightedly retweeting and praising them, however, and it isn't helping.

Taken alone, it looks a lot like Schrodinger's Asshole, a provocative message posted by a troll who "decides whether or not they're full of shit by the reactions of those around them." While Burger King UK at least strategically favors women's rights and agency, its investment in these goals is corporate and it's depressingly easy to imagine it changing hats (crowns?) with the wind.

But even with the best of intentions, the tweet is an obvious mistake. The context that makes it clever (i.e. the tweets following it adding 'If they want to, of course… We're on a mission to change the gender ratio in the restaurant industry') is instantly stripped from it by the design of Twitter itself. This phenomenon is Social Media 101 and it's amazing to see such a big account dive so hard into context collapse.

Finally, consider Popehat's rule: an ironic goatfucker is still a goatfucker.

Napoleon x Evangelion.pic.twitter.com/MbXOlxY7ta

— Catsuka (@catsuka) March 7, 2021

Everytime I promise myself, and you, that I have posted my last deepfake, well, here's Napoléon I Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, singing the theme song from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Get in the robot, Marshal Ney!

About the first thing I published after moving to the U.S. and finding newsroom work here was a blip about an incredibly tacky bed being sold at a local furniture shop. Twenty years later my career comes full circle with Ultimate (or "Uber") Beds, a modular format sold in various configurations and names by the usual suspects.

"I have questions for everyone involved in the conception, design, marketing and purchase of this type of bed," writes Christopher Mims on Twitter.

I assumed it was a vintage horror of some kind but look, reader, look closer: there are USB ports. At least they're the ones with little plastic covers, so you can hose it down afterward.

Matt Keveney's Animated Engines features simple line-drawing animations of engines, such that you might know how the infernal machines work. (via; previously)

After a session that saw staff put in 36-hour shifts and U.S. senators voting their way through more than a dozen amendments, the upper chamber today passed President Biden's $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill.

Senators narrowed the eligibility for stimulus checks, trimmed the federal boost to unemployment benefits and removed a provision to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. The Senate parliamentarian ruled that the wage hike violated the strict rules of reconciliation, which is the procedure Democratic leaders are using to approve the bill in the chamber without any Republican support. The Senate bill contains many of the same measures aimed at assisting Americans in need that were in the legislation approved by the House and the package that Biden unveiled in January. In addition to another round of direct payments, it would provide more assistance for people who are unemployed, hungry or uninsured as well as for those at risk of losing their homes. It also would provide a bigger tax break for parents.

The most distinctive image of the session was Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat elected after supporting a $15-an-hour minimum wage who yesterday abandoned that promise in showy fashion to side with Republicans and seven other Democrats in killing the proposal.