It's hard to know what to make of the raid on Trump family lawyer/bagman/fixer Michael Cohen's office -- there's been plenty of news tick-tock on the subject and legal experts agree that something momentous is going on, but what, exactly, does it all mean. Read the rest
The London offices of soi-dissant Facebook mind-control sorcerers Cambridge Analytica were raided by the UK Information Commissioner's Office, after a judge issued a search warrant for material related to the illegal acquisition of 50,000,000 Facebook profiles by the company. Read the rest
Pharmadouchebro/Larval Trump Martin Shkreli was convicted of securities fraud in August and then sent to jail in September for putting a bounty on a lock of Hillary Clinton's hair. Read the rest
Rightscorp (previously) is the extortion outfit that terrifies people into paying it money for unproven accusations of copyright violations, enlisting ISPs to cut off subscribers who won't cough up. Read the rest
While the internet was having a field day deciding if the tweet was intentional or not, McDonald's copped up to the boo-boo with this tweet nine hours later:
When you tweet before your first cup of McCafé… Nothing comes before coffee. pic.twitter.com/aPJ2ZupS9b
— McDonald's (@McDonaldsCorp) November 24, 2017
(Mashable)
photo by Rusty Blazenhoff Read the rest
A gas station didn't heed the attendant's request to put out his cigarette, so the attendant doused him and his car with a powder-based extinguisher.
Sorry for the potato camera quality of the video. For a clearer look at the smoking customer, here's a portrait of him by Robert Crumb. Read the rest
This year's Hugo Award winners have been announced, and the prizes overwhelmingly went to brilliant women like NK Jemisin and Seanan McGuire, to the eminent satisfaction of all those who saw the right-wing, misogynist, racist campaign to make science fiction inhospitable to brown people and women, took countermeasures, and for two years in a row, demonstrated the field's inclusiveness and commitment to quality, rather than pandering to reactionary panic over the prospect of a future that breaks with the shameful past. Read the rest
The YouTube channel Nerdwriter1 digs into the phenomenon of schadenfreude (“the pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune”) and what it can tell us about human psychology and the rise of Donald Trump. Read the rest
When United CEO Oscar Munoz lied about Dr David Dao, slandering the passenger that was beaten unconscious as a direct result of his employees enacting the policies he put in place, he was acting in the knowledge that he would shortly be elevated to the Chairmanship of United's board of directors. Read the rest
In 2012, Google rolled out Certificate Transparency, a clever system to spot corrupt "Certificate Authorities," the entities who hand out the cryptographic certificates that secure the web. If Certificate Authorities fail to do their jobs, they put the entire electronic realm in danger -- bad certificates could allow anything from eavesdropping on financial transactions to spoofing industrial control systems into accepting malicious software updates. Read the rest
Trump went full berzerker last night after a judge in Hawaii shut down his new Muslim ban before it could go into effect, but he's only got himself to blame. Read the rest
The National Policy Institute is Richard Spencer's white nationalist group, registered with the IRS as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, which can receive tax-free contributions from donors. Read the rest
Google is suing Uber, alleging that the company recruited a former Google exec who had secretly offered to give them access to trade-secrets from Google's self-driving car project. Read the rest
It seems there isn't a demographic that justifies stocking Ivanka Trump's "Trump Home" items -- they've now been removed from high-end retailer Nordstrom's, mid-range retailer Sears, and low-end retailer Kmart. They've also been removed from TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Neiman Marcus. Read the rest
Caught on dashcam: a gentleman driving in the parking lane was annoyed with the parked cars blocking his right-of-way and honked his horn before swerving left and cutting off another driver (with a dashcam). When the gentleman was pulled over by the police, he said some bad words at the dashcam owner as he drove past him. Read the rest
Is there anything more fun that watching gloating showboaters get their comeuppance just a few seconds after they erroneously celebrate a victory? Read the rest
Rightscorp, the copyright trolls whose business-model was convincing ISPs to freeze their customers' Internet access in response to unsubstantiated copyright accusations, and then ransom those connections back for $20 each, will be out of money by the end of this quarter. Read the rest
