If there was ever collective schadenfreude to be had, it was when we learned that a bunch of young, privileged rich kids got swindled by the promoters of the 2017 Fyre Festival and were left to fend for themselves on a remote island. On January 18, Netflix is releasing a documentary about the dumpster Fyre.

Here's its teaser trailer:

Get your exclusive first look at FYRE — a revealing new doc about the insanity and rapid unraveling of Fyre Festival: the greatest party that never happened. Premieres January 18. #NetflixNewsWeek pic.twitter.com/B4iaR3UJwM

— See What's Next (@seewhatsnext) December 10, 2018

Previously: Fyre Festival fraudster sentenced to six years in federal prison

(COS) Read the rest “Fyre Festival documentary to air on Netflix in January”

Do you remember when Barney parade balloon ate it during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1997? The internet sure does. Footage of the schadenfraude-inducing incident is making the rounds again, proving that hating on the annoying purple dinosaur is timeless.

The day after it happened, The New York Times reported the accident was due to high winds and that Barney wasn't the only damaged float:

...For a while, the balloons seemed to be falling like flies. Barney suffered extensive damage and had to be removed at 51st Street. The Pink Panther succumbed at 42d Street. Quik Bunny and the Cat in the Hat limped away at 36th Street...

The crash of Barney, the purple dinosaur beloved by preschoolers and loathed by some parents, was heart-stopping for those at the end of its ropes. ''Everything turned purple,'' said Antonella Laggiano of Mamaroneck, N.Y.

''Barney attacked us,'' said a still-stunned Isabella Fasciano of Hoboken, N.J. After it fell, police officers rushed to puncture it with knives and relieve the danger.

Thanks, Andy! Read the rest “When Barney got gloriously wrecked at the 1997 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade”

Messages leaked to Buzzfeed reveal the bizarre story of the "Tory First Battalion," a secret Twitter group formed to capitalise on the smear that the Labour party was anti-Semitic by coordinating and amplifying anti-Corbyn messages. Read the rest “UK Tories created a secret anti-Corbyn Twitter army, which promptly attacked Theresa May”

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 “Contrasting perspectives on the meaning of the raid on Michael Cohen's office”

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 “UK Information Commissioner's Office raids Cambridge Analytica's London office”

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 “The DoJ is going to make Shkreli sell off his unreleased Wu-Tang and Lil Wayne albums, his Picasso and his Enigma machine”

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 “Rightscorp finished Sept 2017 with $3,147 in the bank, warns investors it will likely have to shut down without more cash”

McDonald's accidentally tweeted this late Thursday night:

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 “McDonald's Black Friday oopsy tweet”

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 “Idiot at gas station won't put out cigarette, so attendant uses fire extinguisher”

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 “2017 Hugo winners: excellent writing and editing by brilliant women”

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 “Should we feel bad about feeling schadenfreude?”

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 “United's CEO just lost out on the Chairmanship of United's board”

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 “Google: Chrome will no longer trust Symantec certificates, 30% of the web will need to switch Certificate Authorities”

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 “Trump's unhinged tweeting got him elected, and it's costing him in court, bigly”

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 “Punched Nazi loses tax-exempt status”

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 “If Google wins its trade secrets suit against Uber, it could tank Uber”

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 “A brand without a base: Kmart, Sears, TJ Maxx, Marshall's, Neiman-Marcus join Nordstroms in kicking Ivanka Trump's products to the curb”