Last March, a Nevada court indicted April Parks, proprietor of A Private Professional Guardian, which had secured court guardianship over four hundred elderly Nevadans, working with crooked doctors and social workers to find the identities of old people who had considerable assets, then using a streamlined court process with no checks and balances to have those people declared to be unable to care for themselves. Read the rest

You could be the next proprietor of the Clown Motel in Tonopah, Nevada. Packed with kitschy-creepy clown figurines, paintings, and mannequins, it's conveniently located next to a cemetery with the graves of residents and prospectors who died of a strange plague in 1902. Reportedly the ghosts of some of those folks haunt the Clown Motel. You could own it for $900,000 so long as you contractually agree that the Clown Motel won't shut its doors. From Mysterious Universe:

The greasepaint ghouls came from Leona and LeRoy David, a brother and sister who built the motel in 1985 and chose the site next to the cemetery because their father was buried there. They put their small collection of clown memorabilia on display and ran the inn until 1995 when they sold everything to Bob Perchetti, whose family has lived in Tonopah for four generations and most certainly knew the haunted history of the motel and its clownish contents...

Seven-year employee Marlena Dufour says she’s seen apparitions and moving mannequin hands and has heard disembodied voices. Dufur told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that a guest had a room key mysteriously disappear. However, it’s the clowns that cause the most trouble. While many guests come dressed as clowns and enjoy the experience, others have walked into the office and screamed or fainted.

Read the rest

Less than a year after Ammon Bundy and his terrorist pals were found not guilty for their takeover of Oregon's Malheur Federal Wildlife Reserve (which included a fatal shootout four terrorist pals of Cliven Bundy have been exonerated by a Nevada jury for their 2014 standoff in which they insisted -- at gunpoint -- on the right to graze their private cattle on public lands. Read the rest

Update: Here is the indictment. Hutchins is accused of making and selling a keylogger called the "Kronos banking trojan."

Marcus Hutchins is the 23 year old security researcher behind the @MalwareTechBlog Twitter account; he's the guy who figured out that the Wannacry worm had an accidental killswitch built in and then triggered it, stopping the ransomware epidemic in its tracks. Read the rest

Between Las Vegas and Reno, there is a sleeping establishment like no other. It's simply called The Clown Motel and it's been deemed "America's scariest motel."

In 2014, Cory described it as follows:

Hundreds of clowns stare from every corner, the walls are hung with clown-portraits, and there is a "historic miners' cemetery" out the motel's back door, wherein rest the mouldering corpses of the victims of a mysterious epidemic that is only known as "Tonopah plague."

Now it can be yours for $900,000.

According to LasVegasNow.com, the motel's current owner (of 22 years) Bob Perchetti is selling it so he can retire, "I'm going to go fishing. I want to go enjoy myself. I'm going to do a little camping with the grandkids."

One condition of the sale: "the new owners can upgrade it but don't lose what the people love."

Wait, does that mean the clowns or the corpses? Either way, no thank you. Read the rest

On March 3, a worker shot this video of him and his co-workers illegally pouring HOCUT 795-B out on the Nevada desert floor, then burning out the residue, at the insistence of their (unnamed) employer. Read the rest

Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Conrad Hafen -- who is fighting a contested election this year -- put deputy public defender Zohra Bakhtary in handcuffs and made her sit with the criminals in the dock while he sentenced her client, who was unrepresented for the duration of the event. Read the rest

One recent poll's dead heat was confirmed by another this morning, placing Bernie Sanders only one point behind Democrat rival Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the Nevada caucus.

CNN's poll puts Sanders at 47% and Clinton at 48%; last week's Washington Free Beacon had them both at 45%

The Observer reports that Hillary was way ahead until very recently and that it looks more likely Sanders will score an upset.

One of the most interesting questions that will be answered in the coming weeks, beginning with the Nevada caucus and South Carolina primary, will be the number of young black and Hispanic voters who turn to Mr. Sanders in the same way most young white voters have supported him in Iowa and New Hampshire. My guess is this number will be larger than most insider establishment pundits expect.

Third, while Mr. Sanders has campaigned throughout Nevada for his positive agenda to create a political revolution that will make the American economy less rigged and more fair, Ms. Clinton has become a largely negative candidate with nonstop 24/7 attacks against Mr. Sanders that harden the low favorability and high distrust ratings plaguing her candidacy.

A typical "practical Hillary" messaging blunder: yesterday, Chelsea Clinton, campaigning for her mother, took aim at Sanders' penal reform plans. Whatever she meant, it was reported as her lecturing minorities why America must mass-incarcerate them. An unfair press, or a tin ear on her own base? Read the rest

No one knew who the mystery buyer of the Las Vegas Review-Journal was, just that $140m had changed hands under mysterious circumstances. But every reporter on the paper was ordered to drop everything and try to dig up dirt on three Clark County judges. Read the rest

The senator from Nevada scoffed at the Bureau of Land Management's demand that Burning Man build it a $1m VIP compound with showers and flush toilets, saying that the festival's ethic of radical self-reliance should extend to its Fed minders. Read the rest

Tonopoah, NV's Clown Motel is a relic of the Gold Rush town's faded glory years, and it is filled with clowns. Hundreds of clowns stare from every corner, the walls are hung with clown-portraits, and there is a "historic miners' cemetery" out the motel's back door, wherein rest the mouldering corpses of the victims of a mysterious epidemic that is only known as "Tonopah plague." Redditors who've stayed at the Clown Motel have taken to this thread to one-up one-another with tales of the establishment's freaky weirdness. Norwegiancoconut dropped a link to this gallery of photos from a previous stay.

America's scariest motel is haunted... by hundreds of clowns Read the rest

Here's footage of the police in Henderson, NV beating the crap out of Adam Greene, a man immobilized diabetic shock whom the police have mistaken for a drunk driver. The police point guns at him, pull him from the car, throw him to the ground, pile on him, and one officer, Sgt. Brett Seekatz begins to kick him over and over again, while someone screams "do not resist, motherfucker!" Eventually, they realize that he's not drunk and not resisting and call an ambulance.

Greene has received a $158,500 settlement from Henderson city council; his wife got a further $99,000, and the state of Nevada paid $35,000 for civil rights violations.

Police spokesmen won't say whether any of the officers have been disciplined.

Officials wouldn’t specify how or if Seekatz was disciplined over the incident, saying the information is a personnel matter and will not be released. He remains a member of the Henderson Police Department.

However, the department issued a statement noting changes since the incident.

“Henderson Police Chief Jutta Chambers ordered a closer look at the training Henderson officers receive,” the statement read. “The training on use of force techniques was subsequently modified.”

Police Beat Man in Diabetic Shock – and Nevada City Pays for It

(Thanks, Fipi Lele!) Read the rest

Photographer NK Guy has posted his annual "Burning Cam" set of photos from Burning Man. This was my first year attending the festival in Black Rock City (my wife and I went as a mutual fortieth birthday present), and so it's the first time I can say with any authority whether Guy's photos capture the spirit of the thing. I really think they do. Burning Man surprised me -- I expected something very good, but marred by ideological chiding over the "ten principles" the event lives by, and I expected something somewhat spartan, thanks to the logistical challenges associated with bringing everything you need into and out of a remote desert. But Burning Man was decadent, lavish, laid back, and friendly without being creepy. Guy's photos bring out that lavishness, that sense of an end-of-the world party with fantastic people who've gone all out for a final hurrah (that repeats every year). We're planning to return next year, because having gone once, I feel like I must try it again.

Name: Charon Caption: Peter Hudson has been building three dimensional zoetrope sculptures at Burning Man for years.

His works have involved rotating mechanisms with a series of sculptures mounted on them. When viewed with a pulsing stroboscopic light the statues come to life, flickering and juddering eerily.

I'm about to fly to Edinburgh for a gig at the Edinburgh Festival, tonight at 8:30PM. There are still a few tickets left.

From there, I'm headed straight to Renovation, the World Science Fiction Convention in Reno, where I'll be doing a ton of stuff:

Wednesday, August 17 11.00-11.45am - Author in the Library, Sierra View Library (off site), 4001 S. Virginia St, located in the Reno Town Mall across the street from the Reno Sparks Convention Center -- reading, autographing, and Q and A with library community, host: Christine Johnson

2.00-3.00pm - Reading, Reno Sparks Convention Center room A05

Thursday, August 18 8.55-10.00am - Stroll with the Stars, (off site) meet at Stroll Meeting Spot (Walgreen's parking lot, 3495 S Virginia St, about 5 minute walk north of Atlantis), will stroll down to Reno Sparks Convention Center, with Stu Segal, Bill Willingham, Julie Bell, Boris Vallejo, Lawrence M. Schoen, Lauren Beukes, and Ellen Datlow Read the rest