A disheveled, rather soggy-looking white gentleman directed racial abuse and threats to a 77-year-old black woman during a Ryanair flight from Barcelona to Stansted.
In the shocking video, captured by fellow passenger David Lawrence, a man can be heard referring to Mrs Gayle, a 77-year-old pensioner from East London, as an “ugly black bastard”. He appears to be refusing to sit next to her and threatening to “push” her if she does not sit elsewhere.
But the flight's stewards refused to move him, forcing his victim to tolerate his harassment. She asks to be moved, giving the man an entire row of seats to enjoy all to himself. A steward returns to make sure he's happy now. He is.
David Lawrence, who filmed what happened, told BBC Radio 5 Live: "Everything was calm, we were getting ready to take off. And then a man came on board and arrived at his seat, then spoke very harshly to a woman sitting in the aisle seat. That was what got my attention as it was very loud and very aggressive. He started to shout at the woman, saying 'get out of the way', 'move your feet', 'you shouldn't be sitting here'." ...
Mr Lawrence said it was a "horrible, horrible situation" and that he was "shocked" that Ryanair "allowed something like this just to go unchecked". BBC presenter Jeremy Vine was among those saying the incident was "beyond belief", saying Ryanair "need to explain how this man's disgusting racial abuse of the black lady in the seat next to him ends up with HER being asked to move".
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Republican Rep. Jason Lewis mocked a woman who complained of sexual harassment by affecting a traumatized feminine voice during a radio segment where he made quite clear that "she wasn't raped." In another recorded segment, Lewis complained about not being able to "call her a slut" anymore when "they behave as a slut."
https://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/comeon.mp3
Here's the full clip, from a 2012 edition of his radio show, as posted by CNN:
A transcript:
LEWIS: How traumatizing is it? How many women at some point in their lives have a man come onto them, place a hand on shoulder, or maybe their thigh, kiss them, and they would rather not have that happen, is that really going to be seared in your memory, that you'll need therapy for, that you'll never get over tHe MoSt tRaUmAtIziNg ExPerIeNce? COME ON. She wasn't raped.
CNN's Andrew Kaczynski reports that Lewis threatened to sue them for copyright infringement if they posted the recording. Read the rest
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London for years to avoid being arrested by British cops for skipping bail. Read the rest
Nick Clegg's leadership of the UK's Liberal Democrats brought it briefly into the halls of power only to be destroyed by political incompetence and ambitious indifference. He started out commanding a quarter of the popular vote in a three-party system and left it with just 8 MPs, marginalized for a generation. Let's hope he can do the same thing for Facebook as their Head of Global Affairs.
Facebook has hired Nick Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister, to head its global affairs and communications team as it faces escalating problems over data protection and the threat of greater government regulation.
Mr Clegg, 51, will move to Silicon Valley in January to succeed Elliot Schrage, who announced he would leave Facebook after 10 years in June.
His recruitment will be as much of a surprise to the British political establishment as it will be to Silicon Valley, where few European politicians enjoy a high profile in the insular tech industry.
"Months of wooing by Mark Zuckerberg," the Financial Times says, but you may recall this recent licking of the boot from Clegg, who just last month called criticism of Facebook "outright Luddism."
Mark Zuckerberg et al are regularly criticised for not doing enough to stop fake news and extremism, and doing too much to mine our data for the benefit of advertisers, but a threat to the continued existence of humankind? Hardly. ... It’s time we pause for breath before everyone charges off in a stampede of condemnation of tax-dodging-fake-news-extremism-promoting-data-controlling tech firms.
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Fold N Fly is a website that neatly categorizes and ranks paper airplane designs, with easy-to-follow and crystal-clear instructions for making each one. You'll need US Letter size paper! A4 won't do! [via] Read the rest
David Firth's YouTube channel won its millionth subscriber this week, and our reward is a new short animation of Salad Fingers, his most splendid and notorious creation. Read the rest
John Kelly, Trump's chief of staff, and John Bolton, his moustache, got into a "profanity-laced" shouting match so nasty that a resignation from one or the other was briefly anticipated, reports Jennifer Jacobs.
The chief of staff, John Kelly, and the national security adviser, John Bolton, fought over immigration and border crossings, including the performance of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, one person familiar with the matter said.
Bolton criticized Nielsen, a former Kelly deputy whom he advocated to replace him at the department. Trump sided with Bolton, the person said, which may once again stir speculation that Kelly will soon depart the White House.
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Video from Sacre-Coeur in Quebec (attributed to Jean Arthur) shows the forest floor lift and fall eerily as high winds blast the trees.
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Salt comes from the sea. The sea is full of plastic, which we put there. So now 90% of table salt contains plastic.
Of 39 salt brands tested, 36 had microplastics in them, according to a new analysis by researchers in South Korea and Greenpeace East Asia. Using prior salt studies, this new effort is the first of its scale to look at the geographical spread of microplastics in table salt and their correlation to where plastic pollution is found in the environment.
The brands aren't listed and the study is behind the academic wall, but apparently include inland-sourced rock salt. They use seawater to dissolve, extract and filter it, see.
P.S. The Himalayan stuff is mostly inauthentic. Free plastic, though. Read the rest
A top burger chain promises that its new burger will "give you nightmares". It's putting out a 2-minute ad showing actors submitting to a sleep study after devouring a seasonally-themed sandwich, then reporting the night-time horrors that resulted.
Here's the ad:
"The burger in my dream transformed into the figure of a snake," one reports.
Fox 8 News:
A new ad shows participants hooked up to sleep monitoring machines after eating the burger. Per USA Today, the incidence of nightmares increased 3.5 times over the normal rate, apparently due to various proteins. “I remember hearing voices and people walking around talking,” one participant says, per People.
Quite a risky campaign in the country where significant numbers of people think vaccines cause autism, that chemtrails are sterilizing us, that Jews have tails, etc. Read the rest
Loganair's flights between Westray and Papa Westray, two islands in the Orkneys off the British coast, are the world's shortest at only 1.7 miles. They're planning to go electric, either by replacing the current plane's engines or getting a new one.
It takes about two minutes - including taxiing - to complete the 1.7 mile Westray / Papa Westray leg flight, which is about the same length as the runway at Edinburgh Airport.
The record is 53 seconds. The short inter-island services are seen as an ideal possible route for electric planes as a limitation of the aircraft would be range.
As well as Westray and Papa Westray, the inter island routes via Kirkwall on mainland Orkney also serve Sanday, Stronsay, Eday and North Ronaldsay.
The flight spends as much time on the runway taking off and landing as it does in the air between the islands. Three airlines bid the last time the subsidized service came up for tender, according to the Orkney Islands Council News. Read the rest
EotBeholder on Deviantart nails decades of derivative genre fiction and gameplay with "the only fantasy world map you'll ever need."
Wow, almost four years later and this thing just exploded. ... To anyone asking for permission to use this for their own campaigns... I mean it hardly qualifies as "original", so as long as you're comfortable stealing from someone who steals from the people who only steal from the best, knock yourselves out :)
If I could make some additions (which I suppose I could, but, nah) I'd call out the Boring/Doomed Pastoral Village somewhere in the Tiny Bickering Fiefdoms or the Land of Poncy Knights, and also add a Giant Wall to Keep the Monsters Out. Giant walls are so hot right now.
I love the comments and tweets from fans of specific franchises (such as Forgotten Realms or Riftwar) who think it is specifically a parody of their favorite fantasy world. See TVTropes' entry for the fantasy world map and, specifically, the left-justified fantasy maps.
The map of Allansia from the Fighting Fantasy gamebook series is a nice professionally-drawn example.
Previously. Read the rest
The "Halloween Whimsey 3D Latex Mask Head Mask for Party Cosplay Costume Prank Joking", available at Amazon, is this season's de rigeur trick-or-treat outfit.
• Great for Masquerade Parties, Costume Parties, Carnival, Christmas, Easter, Halloween or any other parties
• Perfect for a fun meme, Halloween,Easter, Carnival, Costume parties, Tag party or simply for going to a night club.
• Anyway, it will see plenty of use at times other than Halloween
"Anyway," the author trails off there. Yes, anyway. Plenty of use. Job interviews. Court dates. The opera!
This marvel was chanced upon by Julia Pugachevsky on Twitter: "THE EYES," she writes.
UPDATE: Combine this year's two most popular Halloween accessories in a single terrific costume!
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To enable "further research of information operations on Twitter", the company today published a dataset of tweets posted by known Russian and Iranian troll farms.
In line with our strong principles of transparency and with the goal of improving understanding of foreign influence and information campaigns, we are releasing the full, comprehensive archives of the Tweets and media that are connected with these two previously disclosed and potentially state-backed operations on our service. We are making this data available with the goal of encouraging open research and investigation of these behaviors from researchers and academics around the world.
These large datasets comprise 3,841 accounts affiliated with the IRA, originating in Russia, and 770 other accounts, potentially originating in Iran. They include more than 10 million Tweets and more than 2 million images, GIFs, videos, and Periscope broadcasts, including the earliest on-Twitter activity from accounts connected with these campaigns, dating back to 2009.
Downloads! The Russian set is 1.24GB of tweets, with nearly 300GB of media. The Iranian one is 168MB, with 65GB of media. Read the rest
Iowa Republican Steve King is graduating from retweeting white supremacists and earsplitting dogwhistles to openly endorsing the matter of their movement.
Faith Goldy, an excellent candidate for Toronto mayor, pro Rule of Law, pro Make Canada Safe Again, pro balanced budget, &...BEST of all, Pro Western Civilization and a fighter for our values. @FaithGoldy will not be silenced.
Here's some quotes from Faith Goldy, the Toronto mayoral candidate he endorsed yesterday.
Goldy believes the white race is in the later stages of ‘ethnocide,’ in which non-white cabals are purposefully and systematically snuffing out those of the Caucasian persuasion. ... “Canada’s southern border is in a state of absolute crisis,” Goldy breathlessly intoned in a dispatch entitled “Canada’s illegal invasion”– just as the number of migrants from the U.S. began decreasing, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
Goldy has also appeared on a podcast hosted by one of the most notorious white supremacists in the U.S.; she recited (on camera, while giggling) the white supremacist ‘14 words’ trope about securing a future for the white race; she believes the 2016 shooting in a Quebec City mosque was a Muslim conspiracy; and she favourably quoted the work of a Romanian fascist who called for the elimination of the Jewish race.
Daniel Dale: "This is arguably the most explicit King has been in his support for white nationalism, though he’s been unsubtle for a while. He continues to be treated by Ryan, Trump and the rest of the party as a member in good standing." Read the rest
Weed is legal now in Canada. Here's what it'll cost ya. Some places are banning smoking it in public and there are other bumps expected, but the business windfalls are expected to define an emerging market by attracting global brands previously leery of associating with drugs. With nearly 40m inhabitants, Canada became overnight the largest market for legal weed, with few of the peculiar regulatory compromises found in large U.S. states.
Previously: The New York Times has the dope on cannabis use in Canada Read the rest
