In Milton, West Virginia, concerned citizens called police to report rabid raccoons but it turns out that the animals (the raccoons that is) were more likely just drunk. “We have had calls [of] suspected rabid raccoons twice over the last two days,” the Milton Police Department wrote in a short Facebook post. “Turns out they appear to be drunk on crab apples.” From Newsweek:
It wouldn’t be the first time an animal has made the headlines for public intoxication. In 2015, footage of a squirrel seemingly drunk on fermented crab apples hit YouTube—and attracted millions of views. National Geographic has previously captured footage of drunken monkeys.
National Geographic said in its own 2015 article that research found that animals definitely did get drunk, and listed such examples as butterflies, moths and moose. Don Moore, associate director of the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C., told National Geographic that deer that had eaten fermented apples in orchards were known to get “pretty sleepy, even stumbly.”
Those who commented on the Milton Police Department’s post seemed to appreciate the update. One person joked, “Public intoxication, pretty serious. Thanks for putting him back in the woods.” Another Facebook user said, “I have one on my porch right now you can have.”
THE UNTOLD TALES OF ARMISTEAD MAUPIN examines the life and work of one of the world's most beloved storytellers, following his evolution from a conservative son of the Old South into a gay rights pioneer whose novels have inspired millions to claim their own truth. Jennifer Kroot's documentary about the creator of TALES OF THE CITY moves nimbly between playful and poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. With help from his friends (including Neil Gaiman, Laura Linney, Olympia Dukakis, Sir Ian McKellen and Amy Tan) Maupin offers a disarmingly frank look at the journey that took him from the jungles of Vietnam to the bathhouses of 70's San Francisco to the front line of the American culture war.
With Veteran's Day starting off the week, the charity group Homes For Our Troops kicked off a celebrity-fueled series of auctions to raise funds for their cause. While you can bid on everything from a Game of Thrones sweepstakes to George Clooney's motorcycle to help build accessible homes for injured veterans, a real standout gem is a walk-on role in Bill & Ted Face the Music.
Writer Ed Solomon, who penned the first two installments with Chris Matheson, announced the auction via Twitter, which is going on for one day only. And that happens to be today.
You can own this DIY hovercraft Delorean for $45,000 "or best offer." After all, where you're going, you don't need roads. The seller is donating 10% of the sale to The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinsons Research. Video of the vehicle below. From eBay:
What you get:
1. Hand-built Hovercraft sculpted to look exactly like a Delorean. This is a functional work of art, it is not a Delorean bolted onto a hovercraft. There's only one in the world!
2. Custom flatbed tilting trailer built specifically for this hovercraft
3. Miscellaneous spare parts and supplies including spare engine parts, fans and propellers, nuts and bolts.
4. Free phone consultations with me for any technical questions you might have...
The Hovercraft is based on the blueprints for the Universal Hovercraft UH-13PT. The basic shape of the hull, skirt, and fan ducts come from those blueprints, but pretty much everything else is customized. The Delorean body is made out of styrofoam wrapped in fiberglass and painted with metallic paint. The 36” thrust fan is powered by a 23hp Briggs & Stratton Vanguard riding lawnmower-style engine. The 24” lift fan is powered by a B&S 875 Professional series push mower engine. The hull of the craft hovers about 6-8 inches over the surface, and can hover over anything relatively flat: land, water, ice, snow, sand, asphalt, etc. The top speed with the current thrust configuration is 31 mph on the water in good conditions.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Muckrock teamed up to use the Freedom of Information Act to extract the details of 200 US cities' Automated License Plate Recognition camera programs (ALPR), and today they've released a dataset containing all the heretofore secret data on how these programs are administered and what is done with the data they collect.
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In the latest bombshell development, according to a new report authorities believe the entire tale was a ruse conceived by McClure, D'Amico and Bobbitt in a scheme to cash in.
All three are reportedly expected to be charged with conspiracy and theft by deception for working together to concoct the story.
The précis as alleged: they all scammed the media and the public, then the couple scammed Bobbitt, presumably believing he wouldn't go to the authorities because then everyone gets busted. But he did, and everyone got busted.
Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's $50,000,000 Calabasas, California mansion was spared from last week's wildfires thanks to the actions of private firefighters working on behalf of insurers who've written policies on about 1,000 of California's priciest homes.
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A year ago, the Norwegian Consumer Council commissioned a study into kids' smart watches, finding that they were incredibly negligent when it came to security and incredible greedy when it came to surveillance: a deadly combination that meant that these devices were sucking up tons of sensitive data on kids' lives and then leaving it lying around for anyone to take.
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The Bolton News, covering Bolton and other communities in the hinterlands of northwest Greater Manchester, England, between Wigan and Bury, reports that a poo was "discovered in Poundland" Wednesday.
Neil Brandwood reports:
HORRIFIED shoppers were aghast when excrement was found in a town centre store. Faeces was discovered on the exit mat at Poundland in Victoria Square shortly before 11am this morning.
One shopper, who asked not to be named, said: "I was appalled. It's not what you expect."
It was not confirmed by press time whether the excrement was human.
Mark Zuckerberg has told the governments of the United Kingdom, Canada, Argentina, Australia and Ireland that he is "not available" for a planned hearing on political disinformation and Facebook.
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Amid a growing number of lethal anti-Jewish hate attacks, including a gun massacre at a synagogue that left 13 dead, a man shouts “Heil Trump” in a crowded theater. Audience members told a reporter they believed they were about to die in a mass shooting.
Amazon's new headquarters will be split between northern Virginia and parts of Queens, New York, and will net the company billions in corporate welfare, branded as "incentives."
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In photography as in film, all the real artistry is in post-production - increasingly so, with the new possibilities cropping up in digital imaging. If you're ready to get serious about your photography, may we suggest HDR Projects 2018 Pro. As working photographers can tell you, this imaging software can help you re-imagine even the most mundane snaps.
That's HDR as in High Dynamic Range. In short, it'll allow you to add a range of luminosity to your pics that is higher than what the brain can perceive, resulting in photos that are beyond photo-realistic. HDR Projects 2018 Pro comes out of the box with a professional toolbox packed with 155 presets and filters, all of which can be fine-tuned to create a unique look in 4k resolution. The system will give recommendations and let you view HRD montages to let you choose at a glance the right enhancement. It's compatible with Photoshop and Lightroom, and will batch-process files from every possible photo source.
Data breaches keep happening, they keep getting worse, and yet companies keep collecting our data in ever-more-invasive ways, subjecting it to ever-longer retention, and systematically underinvesting in security.
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"30 Years of American Anxieties" is a report on what 20,000 letters to Dear Abby reveal about the alarming things in life— and a great data presentation. (more…)
Bon Appétit pastry chef Claire Saffitz is at it again. You probably remember that she's tried her hand at making all kinds of popular junk food from scratch -- Oreos, Lucky Charms, Skittles, Kit Kats and more. Her latest from-scratch creation is a gourmet version of those squishy, marshmallow-filled, shredded-coconut-covered Hostess snack cakes known as Sno Balls. If I've learned anything from her videos, it's that making gourmet junk food ain't easy.
Just for fun, here's the Unwrapped footage (featured in the Bon Appétit video) that shows how Sno Balls are made in Hostess' St. Louis factory, not from scratch:
What would you make with over 1500 Netflix DVD envelopes? Joanna Wilson of Akron, Ohio dreamed of making a dress and, as part of their 20th anniversary, the company made that happen.
Since 2005, Wilson has been saving the red water-resistant envelopes because she was "originally intrigued" by their "unique texture," according to Netflix's DVD.com. By this spring, some 13 years later, she had amassed over 1556 of them. Well, Netflix celebrated their 20th anniversary this year and she shared her collection by using their #DVD20 hashtag on Instagram.
The company was impressed and immediately contacted her to learn more. She told them she was hoping to turn her collection into a dress and they jumped on the chance to sponsor its creation. So, Joanna started looking for a dress designer and found 19-year-old Alyssa Hertz, a Kent State University fashion design student who had already created dresses out of newspaper and styrofoam.
To come up the inspiration for the dress, Joanna (who is a historian of Christmas entertainment) looked to Rosemary Clooney's long red gown in the 1954 movie White Christmas.
Alyssa told DVD.com:
We had a meeting to discuss how we could take inspiration from this famous gown and decided on replacing the fur on the dress with white roses made from envelopes that I painted white, making slight changes to the neckline and sleeves, and adding a dramatic train to finish off this grand dress. We had two fittings while I worked on the project, and a final fitting after it was complete, which I couldn’t have been happier with.
I cannot even begin to count how many hours I spent on this from the middle of August to the beginning of October, or how many sticks of hot glue I used. I can, however, tell you how many envelopes and flowers I used in total! This dress has 526 paper flowers on it and I used a total of 693 DVD Netflix envelopes for the flowers and the dress itself! Another fun fact is that I spent so much time using my hot glue gun on this dress that near the end of the project, it actually caught fire. I had to buy a new one to finish the dress!
After it was completed, Joanna and Alyssa traveled with photographer Keisha Lenee to the Rosemary Clooney House in Augusta, Kentucky to get these shots (and more).
Joanna told DVD.com, "It was so exciting to see so many people interested in our project and want to know the motivation behind making the Netflix DVD paper dress. I felt a little shy wearing the dress and posing for photos with strangers, but I'm also proud of the work Alyssa accomplished and honored that people find this project as fascinating as I do. This has been an unforgettable experience."
Now, if my calculations are correct, Joanna has over 800 red envelopes left, enough to make something else. Maybe a cape? Or a red "carpet" for her to walk on?
The Moroccan Euphorbia resinifera plant produces a resin so spicy that it attains a whopping 16,000,000,000 on the Scoville scale, 10,000x hotter than a Carolina reaper chili.
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The top three airports—Denver, Orlando and Phoenix—have one major factor in common: strong competition among airlines. Denver is one of the few airports with three major airlines connecting customers: United, Southwest and Frontier. In Phoenix, American and Southwest compete with connecting hubs. In Orlando, the largest airline, Delta, controls only 28% of passenger traffic.
You can own this DIY hovercraft Delorean for $45,000 "or best offer." After all, where you're going, you don't need roads. The seller is donating 10% of the sale to The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinsons Research. Video of the vehicle below. From 
