Armalite created the AR-15, sold the rights to Colt in the fifties, and the design long ago emerged from patent and became widely-copied. The AR-15 itself will no longer be made for consumers by Colt, it says. It says they're just not that popular among consumers and the company needs to focus on institutional sales.

The fact of the matter is that over the last few years, the market for modern sporting rifles has experienced significant excess manufacturing capacity. Given this level of manufacturing capacity, we believe there is adequate supply for modern sporting rifles for the foreseeable future. ... At the end of the day, we believe it is good sense to follow consumer demand and to adjust as market dynamics change. Colt has been a stout supporter of the Second Amendment for over 180 years, remains so, and will continue to provide its customers with the finest quality firearms in the world.

Missing in a lot of the coverage is the fact lots of companies make AR-15s. Colt not making AR-15s is like Sony not making laptops. Read the rest

Adrian Lamo is most famous for turning U.S. Army intelligence analyst and whistleblower Chelsea Manning in to the authorities, but was already well-known among hackers and journalists because of his penetration of The New York Times' source database, subsequent conviction for the hack, and his sparkling personality. He died mysteriously last year in what many assumed was suicide or murder, but NPR's Dina Temple-Raston investigated his last months and found a tragic figure in failing health, evicted by his carers and in chronic pain. He likely died overdosing prescription drugs, kratom and nootropics after suffering a twisted leg.

His doctor was in the process of weaning him off some of the medications, including reducing the three different benzodiazepines he was taking. That is of particular interest because about a month before Lamo died, the FDA came out with a medical alert — a warning against mixing benzos with kratom. The combination had been linked to dozens of deaths.

"A few assessable cases with fatal outcomes raise concern that kratom is being used in combination with other drugs that affect the brain, including ... benzodiazepines," the alert read. Rohrig said Lamo had a handful of what he called designer benzos in his system, some of which weren't available by prescription in the U.S.

"The most common way of getting these particular ones is basically off the Internet," Rohrig told us. "You can order them and have them shipped to whatever address you want." Debbie Scroggin assumed that lots of the pills and supplements coming into the house were in those packages addressed to Adrian Alfonso.

In Untitled Goose Game, you are the goose: an irascible, annoying, hostile bird waddling around the environs of your pond, attacking children and ruining things.

It's a lovely morning in the village, and you are a horrible goose.

Makes me think of a cross between Katamari Damacy and Postal. It's made by Aussie developer House House -- Jacob Strasser, Nico Disseldorp, Michael McMaster and Stuart Gillespie-Cook--and published by Panic. Read the rest

Trashwear retailer Yandy has released the perfect costume for Halloween 2019: sexy Mr Rogers. (Previously)

Won't you be my neighbor? Entice your friends next door with your playful puppets! Suit up with a neck tie, and be the friendliest next door neighbor in town in this exclusive Nicest Neighbor costume featuring a red top with a V-neckline, long fitted sleeves, a white detachable collar with a black neck tie, and matching high waisted gray shorts with belt loops. (Hand puppets, wig, belt and socks not included.)

Amazon has plenty of gray wigs in the requisite style, but those hand puppets seem hard to find. Read the rest

A day after a photo emerged of Justin Trudeau in brownface, as an Aladdin-esque genie at a 2001 party, the other shoe dropped: video of him fully blacked-up in a minstrel wig. The video dates from the 1990s.

CBC News:

The video was shot in the early 1990s, however it’s not clear where it takes place.

The video, obtained exclusively by Global News, shows Trudeau covered in what appears to be dark makeup and raising his hands in the air while laughing, sticking his tongue out and making faces. He’s wearing a white T-shirt, and his jeans are ripped at the knees. It appears as though his arms and legs are covered in makeup as well.

You can't trickle-truth when you don't control the faucet. Read the rest

The world's first vagina museum will open November 16 in London. Read the rest

Spread over an area of 40 football fields, New Delhi's garbage mountain towers over nearby buildings.

Ghazipur landfill in New Delhi is India's highest rubbish mountain, spreading over an area larger than 40 football pitches. It is predicted to grow taller than the Taj Mahal by 2020. Along with the smell, smoke and pollution from this mountain of trash are said to be the ‘cause of all diseases’ in the surrounding neighbourhoods.

Here it is on Google Maps, next to a "dairy farm":

It is, unquestionably, killing the locals.

"It was a flood of trash," says Kumar. "I saw heaps of garbage coming down the hill like a flood and suddenly, we were swept into the canal. For a moment, everything went dark," he told Al Jazeera. Kumar was lucky. A sudden thrust from within the canal pushed him on to the surface and he was rescued by the locals of Mullah Colony, only a few hundred meters away from the infamous landfill site.

He searched for his cousin, but there was no trace of her.

A man already awaiting trial on charges of auto theft was arrested again, this week. The new charge? Auto theft. The Gallup Independent, via the AP:

Justin Villa was arrested Sunday after a witness reported seeing the 37-year-old driving a stolen Chevrolet pickup. According to a criminal complaint, Villa was spotting in the stolen truck around Gallup, New Mexico, before being confronted by a police officer. Court documents show Villa has two stolen vehicle cases pending in McKinley County and one pending in Cibola County.

The Palace is displeased. In an interview, former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron says that he asked the Queen to "raise an eyebrow" in the run-up to the Scottish Independence vote when it looked likely they would leave the union. She did as she was told, and so did they.

Just as the first rule of Fight Club is that you do not talk about Fight Club, the first rule of the relationship between the prime minister and the Queen is that you never, ever talk about the relationship between the PM and the Queen.

It is difficult to imagine anything other than horror in the Palace at David Cameron's revelations. Not just because he has broken the first rule. But because he has made it painfully clear that in 2014 he used the Queen for his own political purposes. And that she and her advisors thought that was OK.

The Queen told Scots to "think carefully about the future" and it was an eyebrow-raiser at the time; the Prime Minister disclosing that he told her to tip the scales deprives her of the phrase's plausible ambiguity.

On the Royals Meddling In Politics Threat Level Chart, this is above a Lip Purse but lower than an Audible Exhalation. But on the Politicans Fucking With the Monarchy Chart, it's an Actual Tut.

It could not be worse-timed (or better, depending on your perpective) because the U.K. Supreme Court is currently deciding on the legality of current P.M. Boris Johnson shutting down Parliament in the run-up to Brexit. Read the rest

The lost seal pup in this photo, taken by tourist boat operator William McPhee is fine. It was floating unconscious in the water after being parted from its mother, writes the BBC, and was lucky someone chanced across it.

She "would certainly have drowned" if not for their "quick thinking and efforts", a Tynemouth Seal Rescue Unit spokesman said.

Lex is a "wearable" chair, an apparatus that attaches to your thighs and waist. Read the rest

Move over, Popeyes and Chick-fil-A! Fast-food giant KFC is trialing a new menu item in Pittsburgh and Richmond. The Chicken Donut is a slab of deep-fried chicken sandwiched between two glazed donuts.

Consumers are increasingly seeking novel, crave-able flavor combinations that give them the best of both sweet and savory worlds to create a unique taste experience. Through this test market, KFC is evaluating consumer appetite for bringing this growing food trend to its customers on a national scale.

Business Insider reports on the carb bomb.

The chicken-and-doughnut meal will cost $5.50 for one doughnut and $7.50 for two doughnuts. The sandwich is priced at $6, or as a combo meal for $8. KFC said customers can also add a doughnut — served hot — to any meal for $1.

KFC said in a press release that it was using the test to evaluate whether customers are craving chicken and doughnuts on a national scale.

According to a representative, the doughnuts will arrive at stores already cooked, and when a customer orders them, the doughnuts will be dipped in the fryers and glazed with a vanilla icing to ensure they are hot and fresh.

The life of reviled Hollywood sex pest and alleged rapist Harvey Weinstein is "ruined".

An attorney for Harvey Weinstein lamented that “his whole life has been ruined” and defended the accused serial sexual abuser and disgraced movie mogul against the more than 70 women — including former employees and Hollywood stars — who have accused him of sexual assault by blaming them instead.

“No matter what happens to Harvey Weinstein, he will pay the biggest price there is. Even if he wins, Gayle, his whole life has been ruined, toppled, damaged,” Donna Rotunno told “CBS This Morning” host Gayle King in an interview that aired Tuesday. “And whether it’s by his own doing or others, that’s the fact. And the fact is that no matter what we do ― and we can walk out of that courtroom with a ‘not guilty’ and walk him out onto those courtroom steps, and he never gets to be Harvey Weinstein ever again.”

Such a shame. Read the rest

The Bridge Inn in Middleton-in-Teesdale, England, has not only been closed since 2011, it's been demolished and replaced by housing. So who was giving it bad reviews on TripAdvisor?

"We were looking for old photos of the pub on Google and the reviews came up. We found it quite funny," Mr Goodall, managing director of New Era Regeneration, told the BBC.

"I did contact TripAdvisor on their website and advised them that the reviews were impossible as the pub wasn't trading and they were slow to respond."

The reviews are still on the TripAdvisor website

It's easy and cheap to be cynical, but armies of accounts with names like 634JimJones and Charl3s, stock art avatars and brief positive or negative remarks that could apply to anything? TripAdvisor is a derelict mannequin factory.

Which UK:

The travel website TripAdvisor is failing to stop fake reviews boosting the rankings of top-rated hotels, Which? has claimed.

The consumer organisation analysed almost 250,000 reviews for the 10 top-ranked hotels in 10 popular tourist destinations around the world, finding one in seven had “blatant hallmarks” of fake reviews.

Which? Travel reported 15 cases to TripAdvisor and claimed that the site admitted 14 of the hotels had already been caught with fake positive reviews in the last year.

User-generated content sites with frictionless signup and a paragraph-long content model are an easy target for fakery. The rot spreads faster than the pain, so when it gets so bad they have to clean it up, it's already too late. Read the rest

After researching dozens of Nicolas Cage-themed pillows, we found that the DoubleUSA Nicolas Cage Rainbow pillow [Amazon] is the best option for most users. Featuring two-sided high-definition printing, a hidden zipper and a contemplative yet intense Nicolas Cage, it offers a whimsical 20x30" dose of hypoallergenic polyester.

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Richard Stallman resigned Monday from his positions at MIT and the Free Software Foundation, following controvery over his remarks suggeting victims of Jeffrey Epstein were willing participants.

Last week it emerged that Stallman had cast doubt upon the reports that AI pioneer Marvin Minsky had sexually assaulted one of Epstein’s victims. In an email chain sent to the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) mailing list that was published by Motherboard, Stallman said that “the most plausible scenario” was that Epstein’s victim “presented herself to [Marvin Minsky] as entirely willing.”

"Stallman cast doubt over the use of the term “sexual assault”"

Stallman also described the distinction between a 17 or 18 year old victim as a “minor” detail, and suggested that it was an “injustice” to refer to it as a “sexual assault.” The emails first came to light after MIT alum Selam Jie Gano posted about them on Medium, and she said they would have been seen by undergraduates who are themselves 17 or 18.

Financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein killed himself last month while awaiting trial on new sex trafficking charges, amid speculation about his extensive contacts with America's scientific and political elites.

Stallman, who founded the FSF in 1985, said that headlines casting his remarks as a defense of Epstein were a mischaracterization. But they also drew attention to Stallman's long history of jocular sexism and now-repudiated past arguments in favor of permitting child pornography.

MIT's own entaglements with Epstein, and its apparent efforts to conceal them, recently led to the resignation of MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito. Read the rest

British cops have an (unearned?) reputation for restraint. So it's always wild to see them do things that even the rootin'-tootin' murderers of America's thin blue line would balk at. Here's one simply ramming a suspect with his cruiser, on foot: "There's a myth that if they take their helmet off or take to the pavement, we won't pursue them," says officer lawnmower.

Met police use "tactical contact" to take down a moped rider who escaped by riding at speed through a park and down pavements. Officers also sprayed DNA identification spray in the incident in case the offender escaped and then potentially could be identified later. Rider arrested for failing to stop for police, theft of motor vehicle, possession of Class-A drug with intent to supply, failing a road-side drug test, and dangerous driving.

Police have gotten in trouble for 'tactical contact', but the sands are shifting underfoot thanks to Brexit rage, the normalizing effect of documentaries such as this one, and of course to posts like this one, inevitably experienced as facile entertainment irrespective of any sentiment or framing I might apply to it.

"We recovered your stolen scooter, sir! What's that, sir? No, actually you'd best come get it in your car." Read the rest