Police shut down part of a train station in Westchester County, New York to investigate a suspicious package. Turned out that the suspicious package was a new emergency calling device for passengers to report suspicious packages and behavior.
(NBC4NY)
Feizhai kuaile ("fat otaku happiness") is a semi-ironic term used by young Chinese people on social media to celebrate slacking off with sedentary activities and high-calorie snacks, which are given ironic nicknames (pizza is "fat happy pancake" and Coke is "fat happy water"). Read the rest
Keep the excesses of one of the world's cruelest, most corrupt nations top-of-mind with this $80 Kim Jong Un men's romper suit, which is, conveniently machine wash/wrinkle free. via Crazy Abalone) Read the rest
Throughout the election cycle, The GOP Arcade has been releasing satirical 8-bit games about the GOP and right-wing politics in America; the New York Times commissioned a special one, based on the classic Oregon Trail, in which you play one of three voters attempting to cast a vote in either Texas (where you are a Latina nurse); Wisconsin (where you are a black salesman) or California (where you are a white programmer). Read the rest
Daily Show writer Daniel Radosh's son came home from school with a permission slip that he'd have to sign before the kid could read Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451, which is widely believed to be an anti-censorship book (Bradbury himself insisted that this was wrong, and that the book was actually about the evils of television). Read the rest
Pandyland generates random comics featuring two generic-looking webcomic dudes. The stricter formula of panels and texts gives it a nastier, less computer-zany vibe than most "humorous" comic generators. Lots of unsafe combinations. Read the rest
The Orwell estate filed a bogus copyright and publicity right theft against an inactive Cafepress store where no one had ever bought one of the "1984 is already here" shirts or tea-towels on offer from film critic Josh Hadley. Read the rest
The Intercept's Dan Froomkin played turd-in-the-punchbowl at outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder's victory lap party at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press reception on Wednesday, asking why Holder had declined to put one single banker in jail for the monumental frauds that collapsed the world's economy in 2007-9. Read the rest
Stephen Colbert has taken a guest hosting gig at Monroe, Michigan's local cable access during his time off. He's off to a good start, with local musician Marshall Mathers on hand to help review Monroe's upcoming community calendar. Read the rest
Shardcore writes, "I've built a new bot to troll/delight hipsters.
It algorithmically creates post-post-ironic t-shirt designs, posts them on twitter and tumblr and offers them for sale. No human is involved in the process at all." Read the rest
Lawrence and Wishart, a radical press founded in 1936 and formerly associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain, has asserted a copyright over "Marx-Engels Collected Works," a series of $25-50-ish hardcovers, and demanded that they be removed from the Marxist Internet Archive. As Scott McLemee notes, the editions in question were "prepared largely if not entirely with the support of old-fashioned, Soviet-era Moscow gold" and consist, in large part, of arguments about the moral bankruptcy and corrupting influence of claims of private property.
Marx-Engels Collected Works will be removed from Marxists.org on May Day. Here's a torrent of the full set. Read the rest
During the Jubilee, someone -- probably Banksy -- posted a graffiti mural on the side of a Poundland discount shop depicting a child working in a sweatshop sewing bunting with the Union flag on it. The mural attracted great attention in Wood Green, the district of London where it appeared, and local councillors took steps to ensure that it was not removed or painted over by overzealous city workers.
Then, one day, it disappeared. And reappeared in the catalog of Fine Art Auctions in Miami, with an asking price of $500,000. The auction house (which hasn't returned any press calls on the work) claims that it got the Banksy (or "Banksy") from a collector who assured them that it had been acquired through legal means. The Poundland shop says it had nothing to do with flogging the piece, and no one can get the building's owner on the phone.
Meanwhile, a piece of freely given art that decries capitalism and exploitation has been removed from the neighbourhood that was so proud of it, and is up for sale for half a million dollars in America.
Read the restPoundland, the store from which the artwork was removed, has tweeted that it is “NOT responsible for either selling or removing the Banksy mural,” adding that it does not own the building in question and has been unable to contact the owner so far to find out more, while local politician Alan Strickland has already launched a campaign for the artwork to be returned.
Talking to reporters, Strickland explained that “Banksy gave this art for free to our community, so we’re all angry that it’s been removed and put on sale for $500,000 in the U.S.
Essential for protecting yourself from the web's harsh, glaring irony. (From Histoire De Voir, apparently) Read the rest
"Grand Old Party is data visualization project. It is also a set of butt plugs." (Thanks, Ben Goldacre. I think.) Read the rest
Microsoft has (kind of) acquired Netscape, buying many of its key patents and assets from erstwhile owner AOL. Early Netscape employee JWZ calls it "brand necrophilia" and adds, "I assume that this means that ValueClick will now be suing Microsoft over the cookie patent instead of AOL, if that's still going on. There are no winners here." AOL says the sale was made at a loss, for the tax-break.
Microsoft will acquire all the patents surrounding the Netscape browser, while AOL will still own the actual brand. That extends to the Netscape business, which was once an ISP, as well as the URL for the brand.
Netscape was one of the factors behind Microsoft’s entry into the wide world of the internet, prompting them to license Mosaic source code and turn it into Internet Explorer. Fitting, then, that everything has come full circle, and Microsoft has purchased patents behind IE’s raison d’être.
Microsoft quietly buys Netscape browser technology - SlashGear
(Image: My Old Navigator, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from oimax's photostream)
MS to buy AOL patents for $1.1bn - Boing Boing Read the rest
