A man couldn't resist the urge to climb Len Lye's "Water Whirler" sculpture in Wellington, New Zealand earlier this month. To his surprise, the $1 million artwork snapped. In a final act of resistentialism, the sculpture fell on the man while he was in the water, and he was sent to the hospital.

From The New Zealand Herald:

Roger Horrocks, a trustee of The Len Lye Foundation and author of Len Lye's biography, said it was not the first time the iconic sculpture had been damaged.

The foundation had no uptake when it previously recommended Wellington City Council block access to the sculpture. He hoped it would now reconsider.

"A sculpture like that has to be proofed against idiots - total idiots who want to destroy it."

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It really is UNBELIEVABLE.

Someone get grandpa an Ensure, he's gonna need sustenance to make it through this shocker. Are you sitting down? Okay. Please read on, but only if you are feeling strong enough. Read the rest

Donald Trump Jr. wanted to brag about his father's approval rating, but the only way to brag about it would be to fudge the numbers, so that's exactly what he did. But not very well.

Junior wanted it to look like Trump's approval rating was better than Barack Obama's at this point in their presidencies, but since that wasn't possible, he took a screengrab of a cable news graphic that compared Trump to Obama, and then Photoshopped a 50% approval rating over Trump's real 40% approval rating so that it beat Obama's 45% approval rating. He did such a botched job that you can actually see 40% trying to hide behind the 50%.

He then put it on Instagram, writing, "“Amazing. I guess there is a magic wand to make things happen and @realdonaldtrump seems to have it. #maga #amreicafirst [sic]”

Yes, fake news is real. Junior kept the ridiculous post up for over 12 hours before it finally disappeared.

Via Think Progress

Top image: DonkeyHotey/Flickr Read the rest

The hilarious running commentary really adds to this idiot's attempt to rip off a store right before asking about working there. Read the rest

You would think this driver who missed his exit would have stopped after causing a truck to flip over.

But even being the cause of two trucks crashing is not enough to make this sociopath think twice about the disastrous consequences of his actions. I have a feeling that, no matter how many trucks crashed, he'd doggedly pursue his goal of driving his car onto the exit ramp. Read the rest

Note: some understandably NSFW language. Watching morons get out of their cars in front of apex predators has become a YouTube genre, but rarely are they stupid enough to walk out in pen fields with their children while in clear view of said predators. Read the rest

Youtube star Logan Paul, who has over 15 million subscribers, decided to entertain his viewers by going to Japan's Aokigahara Forest, a place where over 500 people have committed suicide, and find a dead body to show them. He succeeded, but when people around the world were outraged, he realized the video could be detrimental to his lucrative career shilling for major brands like Pepsi and HBO he took it down. Now he's sorry, so sorry.

No apology yet from Youtube, which added the video to its trending page, helping it get 6 million views before it was pulled.

From The Washington Post:

The now-deleted video was titled, "We found a dead body in the Japanese Suicide Forest . . .", and that is, more or less, exactly what the vlog showed - complete with extended footage of the body of an apparent suicide victim. In a short intro, Paul called it "the most real vlog I have ever posted on this channel" and "a moment in YouTube history."

On Monday, amid outrage on Twitter and from other YouTube personalities, the video disappeared from Paul's YouTube channel, and the social media superstar tweeted out an apology. Paul said he "intended to raise awareness for suicide and suicide prevention" with the video, and claimed he "didn't do it for views."

"I'm often reminded of how big a reach I have & with great power comes great responsibility," He said. "For the first time in my life I'm regretful to say I handled that power incorrectly.

Poor William C. Bradford. The Trump-appointed head of the DOE's Office of Indian Energy said he was the victim of a bad person who used his social media accounts "over the past several years" to say crazy things like Obama is from Kenya, it was right to put Japanese-Americans into concentration camps in WWII, and that "Obama is the son of a fourth-rate p&*n actress and w@!re."

Soon after Mr. Bradford (he prefers to be called "Brute") was given his plum DOE job he deleted his Twitter account, but The Washington Post found the tweets that the bad person posted to Brute's account without his permission. Here's a sample:

Surprise twist: It turns out that that bad person was "Brute" himself. "Brute" issued an apology to The Washington Post:

“As a minority and member of the Jewish faith, I sincerely apologize for my disrespectful and offensive comments. These comments are inexcusable and I do not stand by them. Now, as a public servant, I hold myself to a higher standard, and I will work every day to better the lives of all Americans.”

To add insult to injury, "Brute" was forced to tender his resignation yesterday from his plum job at the DOE. So long, "Brute!" Read the rest

“Soooooooo apparently I look like a neo-Nazi and got stabbed for it,” wrote 26-year-old Joshua Witt on Facebook. “Luckily I put my hands up to stop it so he only stabbed my hand... please keep in mind there was no conversation between me and this dude I was literally just getting out of my car.” Witt said his attacker was a black man. The alt-right went berserk over the story, but in a big surprise twist, it turns out that Witt stabbed himself.

From Gizmodo:

Witt’s story was first debunked by Buzzfeed who contacted the police in Sheridan, Colorado for the full story. Gizmodo reached out to the Sheridan Police Department as well, who confirmed that Witt actually stabbed himself. And on top of that, he originally told police that his attacker was a “black male” in his mid-20s.

Police checked surveillance footage near the Steak n’ Shake where he was allegedly attacked and couldn’t find anybody running from the scene like Witt had claimed. What did they really find on the tapes? Footage of Witt buying a knife at a nearby store minutes before he was allegedly “attacked.”

“On August 24, 2017 Sheridan Police, re-interviewed Mr. Witt where he was confronted with all the information listed above,” Sheridan Police Chief Mark Campbell told Gizmodo in a statement.

“Mr. Witt subsequently admitted to accidentally cutting himself with the knife while parked in his car in front of the sporting goods store and admitted making up the story about being attacked,” Chief Campbell continued.

Before Chris Cantwell became infamous as the angry white supremacist in Vice's Charlottesville: Race and Terror and soon after as the weeping, frightened white supremacist in a viral video, he was an armed harasser of parking meter officers. In fact, in 2014 The Colbert Report profiled Cantwell and two other equally nutty members of his group. They harassed an Iraq veteran who was a meter officer so much that he quit his job. "Very fine" people indeed.

Here's the video:

From Heavy:

The 36-year-old Cantwell, who runs a podcast called Radical Agenda, is heard sharing his anti-Semitic and racist views in the Vice film, even telling reporter Elle Reve that he doesn’t think President Donald Trump is racist enough because he allowed his daughter Ivanka Trump to marry the Jewish Jared Kushner. “I don’t think that you can feel about race the way I do and watch that Kushner bastard walk around with the beautiful girl,” Cantwell said.

Charles Ross recorded himself removing stop signs for sweet, sweet YouTube views. He found an audience in the local police who pranked him back with a 3rd-degree felony charge. Read the rest

If Mythbusters and Jackass had a brother they kept in the attic and never talked about, he would be FarmtruckandAZN. Farmtruck, the brains of the outfit, invented the Nitrous Chair. Read the rest

YouTuber 8booth runs a stunt channel where he's known for barely making jumps off cliffs and balconies into water. He almost killed himself over the summer with a cliff jump into Morro Bay. His luck ran out at a Laguna Beach motel. Videos below. Read the rest

Unpleasant logorrheic Alex Jones removed one of his videos in which he claimed "Pizzagate is real," and that “it needs to be investigated” after one of his fans went to DC's Comet Ping Pong and fired his gun inside the restaurant. Read the rest

A gentleman in England spots, adroitly, that the road ahead is underwater. So he decides, not so adroitly, to "Charge!" The story unfolds from this point as you expect it will. Read the rest

Matthew D. Muller, 38, is in jail after confessing to a kidnapping, “off the record and on background” to a TV reporter. Kevin Poulsen reports on the bizarre, Gone-Girl like convolutions of the case.

It’s the latest twist in a case that began last March, when 29-year-old Denise Huskins was taken from her Vallejo, California, home, held for 48 hours, then released 400 miles away in Southern California with no ransom paid. She later said she had been sexually assaulted during the abduction. The kidnapping was strange in a number of ways, including its high-tech theatrics. The perpetrator drugged Huskins and her boyfriend, interrogated them for personal information and online passwords, attempted to monitor the aftermath of the crime with a webcam, and used anonymous remailers, image sharing sites, and Tor to communicate with the police and the media during and after the crime.

The Vallejo police announced at the time that the whole thing had to be a hoax staged by Huskins and her boyfriend. But then a second, abortive home invasion occurred in nearby Dublin last June. This time the victims fought off the attacker, and a cell phone abandoned at the scene led law enforcement to Muller, a Harvard Law School graduate and former immigration attorney with a history of mental health issues.

Also wrong: vertical video.

Read the rest