At their own peril, the Swiss government has decided that coffee is "not essential" for human survival. After World War I, Switzerland built an emergency reserve of human necessities for use in the event of war, disease, or other catastrophic events. They've now declared that the emergency food supply doesn't need to include coffee. From BBC News:

It currently has 15,300 tonnes saved up - that's enough to last the country three months.

"Coffee contains almost no calories and therefore does not contribute, from the physiological perspective, to safeguarding nutrition," the Federal Office for National Economic Supply said (in German).

image: Julius Schorzman/CC BY-SA 2.0 Read the rest

There's a lot of controversy surrounding the use of police body cameras. Some privacy advocates argue that the video captured by the always-on cameras has little effect on the behavior of police officers : the statistics surrounding use of force and citizen complaints barely budged before and after the tech was introduced. The police don't much care for them either. The NYPD's police union, for example, says that the footage captured by a body cam shouldn't be able to be used in open court as it could be considered to be part of a police officer's personnel record, which is protected from public disclosure. Then there's the middle ground: by having cops wear body cams while on duty, provided they're not covering them or turning them off during an incident, they're being held accountable for every action they take.

No matter where you sit on this spectrum, it's likely safe to say that using the tech to capture video of someone's ass and balls is likely not a great idea.

From The New York Daily News:

An NYPD detective has been suspended for using another cop’s body camera to shoot an X-rated video of his privates, the Daily News has learned.

Detective Specialist Raymond Williams, a neighborhood coordination officer at the 79th Precinct, was suspended Thursday, law enforcement sources said.

Williams waited until unsuspecting cop Michael Devonish — another neighborhood coordination officer — went to the men’s room in their Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, stationhouse before he snatched Devonish’s body camera and put it to anatomical abuse.

Well their domesticated foxes are really cute. What could go wrong? Read the rest

The median annual income for a person right after they are released from prison is $6,500, so it's understandable why 70% of them receive food assistance of about $200 a month. This summer the House passed a bill that will deny food stamps to people who have served their sentences for violent crimes.

From Alex Busansky (founder of Impact Justice) and Gary Maynard (former president of the American Correctional Association) in the Washington Post:

The provision represents a disappointing step backward in the fight against recidivism and the larger struggle for justice. It also goes against a growing bipartisan consensus on key elements of federal criminal-justice reform, including reentry programs to help formerly incarcerated people as they work to become productive members of their communities.

This proposal might seem narrow in focus, but in fact it will affect more than 100,000 people leaving prisons each year after serving sentences for violent crimes. Loss of support at any point during their reentry — whether it’s a place to live, food to eat, a path to employment or supportive family relations — can tip the balance for the returnee to make a decision that will lead him or her back to prison. Every element of reentry is critical during the difficult struggle to reestablish a life in the community — a struggle we should be supporting in every way possible.

Give your kids Roman candles to use in a confined space. What could go wrong?

Sure, they might drop them in terror. Yeah, the sparkling, white-hot explosion of entertaining color that pours out of the firework could cause them life-altering injuries, but it’s totally cool. Just enjoy the colors.

Enjoy. Those. Colors. Read the rest

Ram Falls is about 20 minutes from where we're staying for the summer. It's a lovely patch of outdoor beauty. We have a lot of that here. As with the provincial parks that surround the cities of Jasper and Banff, It's a great area to camp in, hike or, you know, fall the equivalent of a 10-storey building off a waterfall in your kayak.

Last week, whitewater kayakers Edward Muggridge and Aniol Serrasolses decided that the time was right to take the 100 foot plunge over the falls. Apparently, the conditions were right.

From The Calgary Herald:

“With whitewater kayaking, you want to have a waterfall that has a combination of a deep enough pool and enough volume of water flowing over the actual lip of the falls,” Muggridge said.

“You want to be able to have enough aeration in the landing and a deep enough pool where you can safely descend the drop. It’s definitely a really risky game and it takes some serious precision and mental focus to be able to pull something off like that.”

I'd rather walk, thanks. Read the rest

I can see no way in which modifying a kitchen knife to run a high voltage current through it could ever be a bad idea. The red glow of the blade's cheap steel is synonymous with safety. Breathing the fumes from a melting Rubix Cube? Totally cool.

Cool cool cool. Read the rest

An unusual set of tweets from the official IHOP account suggests that the pancake house chain is going to be changing their name to IHOb. They haven't revealed what the "b" stands for but will on Monday, June 11, the day the name change is supposed to go into effect.

USA Today quotes IHOP’s executive director of communications, Stephanie Peterson, as saying, "We're serious about the quality of food and our menu, and this name change really reflects that."

Ok then.

For 60 pancakin’ years, we’ve been IHOP. Now, we’re flippin’ our name to IHOb. Find out what it could b on 6.11.18. #IHOb pic.twitter.com/evSxKV3QmT

— IHOP (@IHOP) June 4, 2018

IHOb? What could it b? #IHOb

— IHOP (@IHOP) June 5, 2018

This b is an A+ #IHOb pic.twitter.com/QI5rg1sJSP

— IHOP (@IHOP) June 6, 2018

photo by Mike Mozart

Thanks, Evan! Read the rest

Two pranksters placed a remote control lawnmower in a grassy field and steered it from a distance, unseen. One man (the property owner?) made several attempts to climb on it and disable it, but the pranksters would speed up the lawnmower and veer off in another direction whenever he tried. "I think if he fell off and got hurt, we probably could get in trouble," muses one prankster, but the observation does not stop the inanely giggling duo from driving the mower around the field until peace officers arrive. Read the rest

You likely read about "Mad" Mike Hughes in the news last year – you know, when you weren't busy stockpiling canned goods and potassium Iodide tablets to help deal with the existential dread that's currently gripping the planet. Hughes is the flat-earth loving, paradoxical science-hating DIY rocket designer who stated that he'd blast himself into the sky in a steam-powered, homemade rocket to prove that the earth isn't round.

That was a mouthful, but there's a lot going on here.

The first time that Hughes attempted to fire himself into the air in a blaze of Darwinism, the Department of Land Management shut him down, as his flight path would have taken him into the airspace over public lands. So, Hughes scrubbed the launch. Yesterday, he took another go.

According to the Associated Press, Hughes's steam-powered death chair was able to carry him to a distance of 1,875 feet into the air before he and his capsule floated back to earth, in relative safety, via parachute. When questioned about how he was feeling after surviving his flight, Hughes seemed happy that it was over and done with, citing that his back hurt, but over all he felt relieved that it was over.

No matter what you believe about Hughes' beliefs about the shape of the earth, of the lunacy it takes to strap yourself to the tip of a homemade rocket, you've got to respect that he pulled it off. Maybe he didn't gain as much altitude as he'd wanted. Read the rest

Super Seducer is a simulation game for Playstation on Steam advertised to help players "learn state-of-the-art seduction secrets from the master himself, Richard La Ruina, in this incredibly valuable live action seduction simulator."

In the trailer above La Ruina does things like say to women, "If you're not good at cooking you better be real good at sucking dick then." Another game scenario -- say "'I like big boobs,' and try and touch her boobs." La Ruina says, "In the game that's cool, in real life it's totally illegal."

Read the rest

Railway station inspectors in Dongguan, China spotted a woman who hopped on the conveyor belt of an X-ray machine. When questioned, she said she didn't want her handbag stolen, so she rode through the machine, getting an unneeded dose of radiation.

Image: PearVideo screenshot Read the rest

Check out these wonderful commercials for Chambong, the beverage bong.

Drinking things, quickly or slowly, requires that you exercise caution and judgment. Rapidly ingesting alcohol can have some unpredictable effects.

Chambong - Glassware for rapid Champagne consumption via Amazon Read the rest

This man stuck his neck out to show how this car's sliding door wouldn't hurt him. Oops. Read the rest

Someone should get a large tattoo that says "Don't get tattoos of living celebrities unless you have the money for a cover-up." Behold, a gallery of suddenly recontextualized ink: Read the rest

A woman has been arrested in Jerusalem for lighting a man's car on fire at a gas pump after he denied her request to give him a cigarette.

From NBC News:

The woman was arrested after the incident Tuesday and denied having set the blaze intentionally, Micky Rosenfeld, foreign spokesman for Israel's police forces, said in a statement.

Man at a gas station refuses to give woman a cigarette, so she sets his car on fire.

Read the rest

According to one financial services company, Brexit bites—and it hasn't even been officially announced yet. According to Markit (good enough for fussy Tory broadsheet The Telegraph), economic shit's back to 2009 levels already, yo.

Speaking about the data, Markit's chief economist, Chris Williamson, said (emphasis ours):

"July saw a dramatic deterioration in the economy, with business activity slumping at the fastest rate since the height of the global financial crisis in early-2009.

"The downturn, whether manifesting itself in order book cancellations, a lack of new orders or the postponement or halting of projects, was most commonly attributed in one way or another to 'Brexit.'"