Supreme Court Justice Neal Gorsuch used his stolen Supreme Court seat to carry the day for corporations against workers in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, ruling that employers could force potential employees to sign away their legal right to participate in class action suits as a condition of employment. (more…)
My favorite culture critic, the inimitable Mark Dery, visited the "David Bowie is" exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Author of the excellent "All the Young Dudes: Why Glam Rock Matters," Dery sees the exhibit as "a burial chamber for a rock god, replete with everything he’ll need for the afterlife." From the Brooklyn Rail:
"Ziggy's Reliquaries" (Brooklyn Rail)Crepuscule with Bowie, I thought, not quite groping my way through the perpetual twilight of David Bowie is at the Brooklyn Museum. The 400 artifacts in this blockbuster show—costumes (stage and offstage, because when wasn’t Bowie onstage?), handwritten lyrics, record-cover art, stage-set designs and maquettes, personal effects (including, fabulously, the Great Man’s coke spoon from the dissolute mid-seventies)—are displayed in vitrines or mounted on stagelike platforms and spotlit. The encroaching shadows give the exhibition a sepulchral feel. Taking it all in, I had an inkling of what Howard Carter must’ve felt as he got his first look, by flickering candlelight, at Tutankhamun’s tomb...
VanTassel2 posted a fantastically weird series of ridiculous horror and science fiction B-movies with all appearances of humans edited out. Above, is the MST3K favorite "Attack of the Eye Creatures" (1965), without people. Below, "Curse of Bigfoot" (1976) aka "Teenagers Battle the Thing" and "The Mad Monster" (1942), without people.
(via Weird Universe)
I've owned these safety glasses for a long time. They're like regular safety glasses, but they have magnifiers at the bottom. I've found them to be useful when I use a rotary tool, bandsaw, or drill press. I can look down and see the details, and when I back up to see the big picture, it's not blurry because the upper part is not magnified. You can get them in a variety of strengths.
Next year, high schools in Lockport New York will use the "Aegis" CCTV and facial recognition system to track and record the interactions of students suspected of code of conduct violations, keeping a ledger of who speaks to whom, where, and for how long. (more…)
Fondation Émergence created a great PSA they call the Pride Shield, where 193 pride flags (one for each country) show that together we can end the worldwide epidemic of violence against sex and gender minorities. (more…)
High school students in Pennsylvania's Northern Lebanon School District report that they are not allowed to walk through their schools' hallways unless they smile; if they refuse they are sent for mandatory counselling. (more…)
Here's a photo of a gentleman, possibly inebriated, who appears to be urinating while seated in a Frontier jet. The Denver CBS news affiliate reports the man was taken away in handcuffs when the plane landed in South Carolina.
From CBS:
The woman said the male passenger was moved to the row she was in after he allegedly verbally and physically assaulted two other women near his previous seat. She also said the man allegedly touched one sleeping female passenger and later asked another woman about her sexual and marital life.
The passenger said she was disappointed with the way the airline handled the incident, and was discouraged when Frontier flight attendants allegedly placed the suspect next to her. She said one flight attendant warned her of his previous actions, and told her to monitor his status. It was then when the passenger photographed the suspect urinating on the seat.
From Fox News:
When flight attendants became aware of the man’s behavior, he was moved to an empty row of seats in the rear of the plane. A flight attendant also warned Emily, who was sitting in the row across, of his behavior, telling her to leave her seat if the man tried to touch her.
Instead, Emily says the passenger proceeded to urinate on the seat directly in front of him.
“And I scream, ‘He’s f---ing peeing. He’s peeing. Oh my God.’ And the flight attendant doesn’t even acknowledge him at first. [The attendant] acknowledges me and says you need to calm down and stop cursing,” she told Fox 31.
When the woman told Frontier that she wanted to file a complaint about how she had been treated by flight attendants, they gave her a card with a telephone number that had been disconnected.
Image: Shutterstock/M-SUR
Sweden is sending out 4.8 million booklets to households across the country called, "If Crisis or War Comes" (Om Krisen Eller Kriget Kommer).
The booklet is 20 pages long and explains what to do if there is a terrorist attack, if all the shops run out of goods, if tap water stops running, if infrastructure is sabotaged, if you hear a broadcast emergency alarm, and loads of other really scary scenarios. The booklet is meant to help citizens "cope with a major strain."
This isn't the first time Sweden has prepared its citizens for wide-spread disaster. Last time it distributed a similar pamphlet was during World War II.
According to The Guardian:
Similar leaflets were first distributed in neutral Sweden in 1943, at the height of the second world war. Updates were issued regularly to the general public until 1961, and then to local and national government officials until 1991.
The publication comes as the debate on security – and the possibility of joining Nato – has intensified in Sweden in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and recent incursions into Swedish airspace and territorial waters by Russian planes and submarines.
You can read the entire booklet here.
The Vatican has published “‘Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones’. Considerations for an ethical discernment regarding some aspects of the present economic-financial system” of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, 17.05.2018, a lengthy report on the wickedness of Wall Street, in which the finance industry is condemned in the strongest and most specific terms, accused of creating an "amoral culture" dedicated to the "profit of the strongest" instead of the "authentic good." (more…)
Husqvarna's remote-controlled demolition robots remind me of the machine art performances that Survival Research Laboratories has staged since 1977.
Husqvarna bills its machines as "remote workmates ready to tackle your heaviest, most challenging jobs."
Compare that to what Survival Research Laboratories founder Mark Pauline told me in a 1993 interview:
"The real message of machines isn't that they're helpful workmates," Pauline said. "Like any extension of the human psyche, machines are scary things," he says. When you take the scary human psyche and magnify it hundreds or thousands of times with technology, it's really nightmarish."
(via Uncrate)
India's national elections are only a year away, and things aren't looking good for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the ruling party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, an authoritarian war criminal who has a mutual love affair with US President Donald Trump. (more…)
Ana Suda and her friend, Mimi Hernandez, were born in the United States. They live in Montana. On early Wednesday morning they went grocery shopping. A uniformed Border Patrol agent heard them speaking Spanish to each other and demanded to see their identification. When they asked him if they were being racially profiled he said, “Ma’am, the reason I asked you for your ID is because I came in here, and I saw that you guys are speaking Spanish, which is very unheard of up here. It’s the fact that it has to do with you guys speaking Spanish in the store, in a state where it’s predominantly English-speaking." He detained the women in the store's parking lot for 35 to 40 minutes before letting them go.
When the Washington Post contacted US Border Patrol for a response, a spokesperson said, “U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents and officers are committed to treating everyone with professionalism, dignity and respect while enforcing the laws of the United States. Although most Border Patrol work is conducted in the immediate border area, agents have broad law enforcement authorities and are not limited to a specific geography within the United States. They have the authority to question individuals, make arrests, and take and consider evidence.”
When Theresa May became the British Prime Minister, her pick for Home Office Undersecretary of State was Victoria Atkins, a former prosecutor who specialised in jailing drug users, and who was on record for her uncompromising, evidence-ignoring stance on any form of drugs legalisation. (more…)
Asian Boss asked Japanese people on the streets in Tokyo to try American style sushi.
"I can see that they try to hide the fish flavor by using mayonnaise and adding a bunch of avocado."
Indeed.
Finger Machines will likely give viewers a visceral reaction by design. That reaction will vary greatly, from joy to arousal to disgust, and maybe all of the above. It's totally safe for work, but it may be better to wait till you're able to watch away from passersby who might get the wrong impression from a quick glance. (more…)
You'll want to learn to play Fortnite.
Fortnite, the ridiculously fun battle royal game, will hit the esports scene with an incredibly INSANE prize pool. The game's creator, Epic Games, has pledged $100,000,000 in 2018-2019 tournament bounties. In what currency, I am not sure.
I pay my daughter's allowance in "v-bucks" so she can buy cool skins and funny dances in the game. She has never been so eager to get her chores done. Fortnite helps keep the litter boxes clean around here.
The video above is one of Twitch streamer Dr. Lupo's fantastic guides, Domeshot University, where he explains how a competitive gamer thinks.
In the latest episode of Asian Boss, people in the streets of Japan are given American style sushi and asked what they think about it. Most of them don't consider the complex, spicy concoctions to be sushi at all. Sample comments: "This is sushi?" "It tastes like Indian food." "Japanese people won't like this." "Not sushi." "I'd rate it 0 as a sushi." "I would never order this at a restaurant."
Image: Youtube/Asian Boss.
"Commodity City is an observational documentary exploring the daily lives of vendors who work in the largest wholesale consumer market in the world: the Yiwu Markets in China," says director Jessica Kingdon.
A man in Elyria, OH was walking home at 5:26am Saturday morning when he got spooked. Someone - or something – was following him. When he noticed it was a pig, he freaked out and called the police.
Of course the cops thought he was either really drunk or hallucinating. But he wasn't. The frightened gentleman just didn't like being followed by a pig.
The police ended up returning the animal, whose name is Zoey, back to its owner.
Phew. Close call. But the man survived the frightful morning without a scratch and lived to tell about it.
Via CBS
When an Ohio man told police he was being followed by a pig, they thought he was drunk. In fact, he was sober –– and being followed by a pig. https://t.co/cSjZv8jlQp pic.twitter.com/r5OFPRk4fU
— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 20, 2018
Image: North Ridgeville Police Department
