Sunday, December 31, 2017

"Nestle, which sells Arrowhead bottled water, may have to stop taking millions of gallons of water from Southern California’s San Bernardino National Forest because state regulators concluded it lacks valid permits"

WaPo:
The State Water Resources Control Board notified the company on Wednesday that an investigation concluded it doesn’t have proper rights to about three-quarters of the water it withdraws for bottling

...

Nestle said it was pleased that the report reaffirms that it holds valid rights to “a significant amount” of water.
Related: "Nestle SA aims to sell its U.S. confectionery unit by the end of March"
The sale would be the first major step away from the industry by the company that invented milk chocolate. The U.S. chocolate market is sputtering
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G.I. Joe vs The Six Million Dollar Man #1 cover



By John Cassaday and Paul Mounts.
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"The world's first vending machine for the homeless has been launched in Nottingham"

"The bright orange machine also dispenses energy bars, chocolate and sandwiches, as well as socks, antibacterial lotion, toothbrush and toothpaste, and books."

Related: "Anti-homeless spikes have been removed in Manchester, England, after locals kept covering them with cushions."
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From December 27, "There’s a Five-Hour Holiday Line For Howlin’ Ray’s Right Now"

Eater:
There’s simply no talking about Howlin’ Ray’s, the insanely famous [Los Angeles] Chinatown hot chicken shack, without talking about its line

...

most of the time waits are a much more manageable 90 minutes or so
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"An engine failure caused damage on 21 December to five E-8C JSTARS aircraft, or nearly one-third of the fleet of aerial ground surveillance aircraft, the US Air Force says"

"The incident occurs as top Air Force leaders consider whether to cancel a competition to select a business jet platform to replace the E-8C fleet"
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Unbreakable commission

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"Mr Gallen . . . is a specialist in extreme scaffolding"

BBC:
Mr Gallen said the Star Wars team did not give much away when they signed him to the project.

"I met them down in Malin Head, I wasn't sure what they were looking for, to be honest," he said.

"I knew they were looking for access platforms etc and something to support props, but with the secrecy involved and it being Star Wars and the confidentiality around it, I didn't know until the last minute when I was handed a sheet of paper with my name on it, and it was basically saying you are building the Millennium Falcon here."
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"Coster-Mullen is an unlikely judge of North Korea's nuclear progress. He works nights for a major trucking firm, delivering merchandise to big box stores"

NPR:
But for the past 24 years, he has had an extraordinary hobby. He has carefully re-created detailed designs of America's very first nuclear weapons: Little Boy, the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, and Fat Man, the one that fell on Nagasaki.

...

It would be easy to write him off as an eccentric, but experts do not. "He knows a lot," says Johnpierre Paglione, a physics professor at the University of Maryland who recently invited Coster-Mullen to give a lecture about the bomb as part of his class on the Manhattan Project.

"The impressive thing about the work, to me, is how much information he was able to curate over time," says Jeffrey Lewis, a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

It all began in 1993 with a scheme to make a little money.

"The 50th anniversary of the bombs was coming up, and I thought I could make little replicas of the bombs and sell them," Coster-Mullen recalls.
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"Subway closed over 900 stores this year as franchisees claim promotions have 'decimated' business"

BI:
The 909 shuttered US locations this year could be just the tip of the iceberg for Subway closures.

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traffic has fallen 25% over the past five years
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"Scientists recently tested the endurance of (turtle) hatchlings using mini treadmills and special swimsuits"

"the researchers placed the turtles one at a time on a miniature treadmill they'd created in a laboratory, with an artificial light source at the front that attracted the animals in that direction"
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"Please imagine the hard core dystopian vision of a warehouse somewhere in Japan full of crane games operating by themselves. Not a human in sight"

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"What happens when sleepwalkers go online"

From 2008:
It was only when a would-be guest phoned the next day to accept, that she found out what she had done.

...

Each was in a random mix of upper and lower cases, not well formatted and written in strange language.

One read: "Come tomorrow and sort this hell hole out. Dinner and drinks, 4.pm,. Bring wine and caviar only."

Tumblr dedicated to off-pink brutalist architecture



Earnest Goth.
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"How Supreme Grew a $1 Billion Business with a Secret Partner"

BoF:
The terms of the transaction were undisclosed. However, sources close to the company confirmed that Carlyle paid around $500 million for a roughly 50 percent stake in Supreme in a deal that valued the business at over $1 billion.

But Carlyle wasn’t the first external investor to pump money into Supreme. Indeed, while Jebbia was ultra-careful to maintain his label’s credibility with customers, he built what has become of one of the world’s coolest and most commercially successful fashion labels — often dubbed “the Chanel of streetwear” for the power of its brand — with the help of a secret partner.

In 2014, Goode Partners, a New York-based private equity firm, took a minority stake in Supreme via two investment vehicles

...

To be sure, the streetwear scene values authenticity and can be suspicious of success. This is likely the reason why Jebbia kept the backing from Goode a secret and consistently avoided questions on investors. “As a small brand, we do it all. We don’t need an investor,” Jebbia told BoF back in 2016. “We would never go anywhere or do anything where we feel it would compromise what we do.”
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Adventuring gear








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Gashapon







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"That Game on Your Phone May Be Tracking What You’re Watching on TV"

NYT:
Using a smartphone’s microphone, Alphonso’s software can detail what people watch by identifying audio signals in TV ads and shows, sometimes even matching that information with the places people visit and the movies they see. The information can then be used to target ads more precisely and to try to analyze things like which ads prompted a person to go to a car dealership.

More than 250 games that use Alphonso software are available in the Google Play store; some are also available in Apple’s app store.

Some of the tracking is taking place through gaming apps that do not otherwise involve a smartphone’s microphone, including some apps that are geared toward children. The software can also detect sounds even when a phone is in a pocket if the apps are running in the background.
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Windmill on a Denny's in Los Angeles fell off and punctured the restaurant's roof





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Carnivorous sea slug

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The NY Times on "raw water"

"The Rush to Get Off the Water Grid":
The most prominent proponent of raw water is Doug Evans, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. After his juicing company, Juicero, collapsed in September, he went on a 10-day cleanse, drinking nothing but Live Water. “I haven’t tasted tap water in a long time,” he said.

Before he could order raw water on demand, Mr. Evans went “spring hunting” with friends. This has become more challenging lately: The closest spring around San Francisco has recently been cut off by landslides, so reaching it means crossing private property, which he does under cover of night.

...

“Just take a breath of air,” said Mr. Friesen, a professor of materials science at Arizona State University. “Take a deep breath. No matter how wealthy or poor you are, you can take a breath and own that air that you breathe. And yet water — the government brings it to you.”

...

“real water” should expire after a few months.
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Psychological warfare by Bill Belichick, and other football links

















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The map in The Force Awakens was mostly nonsense featuring crew names, and other Star Wars links

















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Saturday, December 30, 2017

"How Peter Mims spent a week hiding in a warship’s engine room"

NT:
Peter Mims was a troubled sailor who wanted out of the Navy.

He had financial problems, his marriage had fallen apart and his chain of command was riding him about qualifications. He’d sought mental health counseling, but was not treated when he needed it most.

...

After he went missing and sparked a massive, 5,500 square-mile man overboard search across the Philippine Sea, the ship’s crew continued a hopeful and fruitless search for him inside the claustrophobic catacombs of the ship’s engineering spaces.
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Thursday, December 21, 2017

"A Connecticut State Police bloodhound is missing after being involved in the search for a man in" Connecticut

WHDH:
But state police say that during the search a handler lost his footing on the steep terrain and dropped the 15-foot leash connecting the trooper to "Texas."

Police say the dog continued tracking up the ledge, but when the trooper reached the top of the hill, Texas was nowhere in sight.
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Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Illustrations by Killian Eng for a special edition of Journey to the Centre of the Earth



$3.99 at Amazon.
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"This dominatrix makes men mine cryptocurrency for her"

"The woman, who calls herself Theodora, is a financial dominatrix, which means clients — many of whom never meet her in person — derive sexual pleasure from giving her gifts and money."
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"The author of the short story 'Cat Person,' which became a viral phenomenon after appearing in The New Yorker this month, has received a seven-figure book deal"

"Deborah Treisman, The New Yorker’s fiction editor, said of the reaction to the story, 'We have not seen anything like that with fiction.'"
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"Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads"

"Among the companies we found doing it: Amazon, Verizon, UPS and Facebook itself"
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"In a decade, Owen Hanson went from playing football and volleyball at USC to being the subject of a major FBI investigation into drug-trafficking, money-laundering, and illegal gambling"

Vice:
Here's how Owen Hanson's football career started: Toward the end of his sophomore year at USC, Hanson said he was in the weight room with some of his volleyball teammates when a football assistant walked by. That particular day, as the football assistant stood and watched, Hanson benched 25 reps of 225 pounds—three more reps than his future teammate Clay Matthews would put up at the 2009 NFL combine. Afterward, the assistant approached Hanson and asked if he would consider trying out for football.

At the time, USC football was on its meteoric rise under Pete Carroll.

...

"Between tenth and eleventh grade, Owen Hanson went from a tall skinny kid to looking like a WWE wrestler," one classmate said.

...

Hanson told me he began to use steroids early in college, and that he was juiced when the football coach saw him that day in the weight room. After he made the football team, he timed his steroid use for summers, when the NCAA wasn't testing.
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Tuesday, December 19, 2017

NY Knick reserve center Kyle O'Quinn moonlights "bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah entertainer"

ESPN:
"The parties are crazy," he said. "I did one, did two, and the next thing you know, I was just Bar Mitzvah Man."

O'Quinn is one of the bigger comedians in the Knicks' locker room, so it makes sense that he would thrive as the headline act at a party filled with 13-year-olds. The 6-foot-10 center spends most of his time at the parties socializing, dancing, joking around with families and -- of course -- taking plenty of selfies.

...

O'Quinn didn't attend any bar mitzvahs or bat mitzvahs while growing up in Queens.

...

So the 27-year-old didn't know what to expect when he was invited to the bat mitzvah of the daughter of his agent, Andy Miller.

"That was one of the best parties I've been to in my life," O'Quinn said.

It also was the beginning of a nice side gig for O'Quinn, who has been with the Knicks since the 2014-15 season. Through his agency and the firm Creative Games, Inc., O'Quinn booked a few appearances at bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs in the area.
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She-Hulk, Hela

A post shared by Rahzzah Murdock (@rahzzah) on



And in other Marvel art:



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Peloton Review by the Wirecutter

WC:
if you stop paying the nearly $40 monthly membership fee, the bike is bricked, and you’re left with an awkward, expensive coatrack

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Peloton is also a relatively new company, and as the bike is set up now, it stays useful only to people who buy it as long as Peloton stays in business.
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"Thousands in China watch as 10 people sentenced to death in sport stadium"

TG:
Seven of the 10 executed were convicted of drug-related crimes, while others were found guilty of murder and robbery.

Four days before the event, local residents were invited to attend the sentencing in an official notice circulated on social media. The accused were brought to the stadium on the back of police trucks with their sirens blaring, each person flanked by four officers wearing sunglasses.

They were brought one by one to a small platform set up on what is usually a running track to have their sentences read, according to video of the trial.
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"Wealthy residents have attached ‘anti-bird spikes’ to trees in a bid to protect their expensive cars from droppings"

“I’m aware that the landowner might be legally within their rights to do this to the trees as they seem to be on private land."
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Umbrella turned into a Dilophosaurus


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Some tweets today from a dogsledder





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Sadomasochistic kiwi mascot


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Monday, December 18, 2017

Salt crystal fox

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"I decided to see how practical it would be to mine Bitcoin with pencil and paper"

KSB:
It turns out that the SHA-256 algorithm used for mining is pretty simple and can in fact be done by hand. Not surprisingly, the process is extremely slow compared to hardware mining and is entirely impractical. But
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Pitchfork demoed Magic Leap's new product

From the article:
The ambition is to conjure up an entire ecosystem out of sound.

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After initial sheepishness, I chase these non-existent tรณnandi like a clumsily psychotic bear in a very expensive gadget shop.

...

Once, after I try to grab a tรณnandi while using the app, I briefly see an error message. It tells me that the tรณnandi will interact with you, but you can’t control them. There’s something humbling about this. It’s almost a sacred ceremony, in secular form.
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Killer robot


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French handball logo with hidden handball player



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Instagram dedicated to dogs waiting outside shops for their owners

A post shared by Taro Yoko (@taroyoko) on


A post shared by Taro Yoko (@taroyoko) on
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Sunday, December 17, 2017

Picard's stunt hands





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Saturday, December 16, 2017

Star Wars Where's The Wookiee? 2 Look and Find Hardcover Book



Available at Amazon, featuring illustrations by Ulises Farinas.
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Death Star balloons at Disneyland

A post shared by Endor Express (@endorexpress) on
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World's smallest KFC


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NBA players in sync

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Ikea candles come with a lot of warnings


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Friday, December 15, 2017

Anglerfish teabag


Terror bird

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"Anti-suicide toilets in a Prague nuclear bunker"

The Last Jedi fan art by Thomas Scioli

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"U.S. Army Study Finds Flaws With Military’s Pivotal Assault on Mosul"

WSJ:
When the battle began in October 2016, the mission that confronted American forces and their Iraqi partners was a difficult one. The city was defended by 3,000 to 5,000 well-armed Islamic State fighters who had more than two years to prepare elaborate defenses and was populated by hundreds of thousands of civilians.

...

The study is sharply critical of the use of leaflets to communicate with Mosul’s civilians. Many of the leaflets weren’t tailored for the tribes and communities that might received them. Other leaflets failed to reach their target audience because the Iraqi military wasn’t properly instructed on where to drop them. When they did reach their mark, the consequences were sometimes disastrous.

“When leaflet drops were successfully deployed into an area, the risk to people was high,” the study stated. “If an attempt was made by a civilian in Mosul to pick up a leaflet in the street, it could be answered with a bullet from an [Islamic State] sniper.”
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"Traffic sent to and from Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft was briefly routed through a previously unknown Russian Internet provider Wednesday under circumstances researchers said was suspicious and intentional"

"Little is currently known about AS39523, the previously unused autonomous system that initiated the hijacking. AS39523 hasn't been active in years, except for one brief BGP incident in August that also involved Google."
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Acquisitions Incorporated Star Wars adventure

Fun Star Wars adventure by the Penny Arcade team available as a podcast or youtube.
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"On Dec. 6, 2017, approximately USD $52 million worth of Bitcoin mysteriously disappeared from the coffers of NiceHash"

KoS:
As the investigation into the heist nears the end of its second week, many Nice-Hash users have expressed surprise to learn that the company’s chief technology officer recently served several years in prison for operating and reselling a massive botnet, and for creating and running ‘Darkode,” until recently the world’s most bustling English-language cybercrime forum.
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$5,824.08 hat for Kobe's jersey retirement



Related, new Nikes for Kyrie:
Irving carries around a piece of confetti from the last game of the 2017 NBA Finals as a constant reminder of how it felt to fall short of victory. The Confetti colorway honors Kyrie’s win-or-learn mentality.

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Thursday, December 14, 2017

Deluxe Sparkles figure available for preorder



Thor: Ragnarok Nendoroid No.863 Thor.
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"The imperial war-bankers of the D'z-Nee"

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"When the NBA's new esports league kicks off in May, the virtual jerseys and stadiums in the game NBA2K18 will be sponsored"

ESPN:
As part of its presentation to teams when briefing them to participate in the esports league, the NBA offered teams the right to sell the naming rights on their virtual stadium, which will be used for their home games.

Teams can sell patches on their virtual jerseys within the game, a logo on the team's basketball court and signage around the arena.
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"Cyber nerds [are] using high-tech software to buy a slew of baby-monkey robots and holding them ransom for thousands of dollars"

TA:
“Grinch bots cannot be allowed to steal Christmas, or dollars, from the wallets of New Yorkers,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York said. He has proposed legislation that bans bots on retail sites, expanding a law that already prohibits the use of bulk-buying tickets for concerts or theater.
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Superman Lives Brainiac





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Hospitalized child asks LeBron to dunk on Lonzo

"I got you." (Lakers Cavs tonight.)
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"A former Indiana doctor who used his own sperm to impregnate patients without their knowledge pleaded guilty to obstruction in the case Thursday and received no jail time"

Fox:
said it could have happened up to 50 times.

...

the judge noted Cline’s age as well as the fact that she felt he was truly remorseful.
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Darth Vader, actor David Prowse helped Christopher Reeve bulk up for Superman

"I took him from 170 pounds when we started and he was 212 [pounds] when he went into the suit"
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Wednesday, December 13, 2017

"How a Dorm Room Minecraft Scam Brought Down the Internet"

Wired:
As Peterson and Klein explored the Minecraft economy, interviewing server hosts and reviewing financial records, they came to realize how amazingly financially successful a well-run, popular Minecraft server could be. “I went into my boss’s office and said, ‘Am I crazy? It looks like people are making a ton of money,’” he recalls. “These people at the peak of summer were making $100,000 a month.”

The huge income from successful servers had also spawned a mini cottage industry of launching DDoS attacks on competitors’ servers, in an attempt to woo away players frustrated at a slow connection.

...

“Mirai was originally developed to help them corner the Minecraft market, but then they realized what a powerful tool they built,” Walton says. “Then it just became a challenge for them to make it as large as possible.”
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The original plan for KOTOR 2 was for a Yoda-esque alien to be your master

EG:
"The initial twist in the first two-page concept we had for Knights of the Old Republic 2 was you were going to be trained by a Yoda-like figure," Ohlen says, "someone from the Yoda race. That character was going to train you in the first part of the game but then you were going to discover this Yoda figure was actually not the good Yoda you expected...

"He was training you to essentially be his enforcer, a Dark Lord to conquer the universe, and he was going to become the main villain."
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"Robotic Blimp Could Explore Hidden Chambers of Great Pyramid of Giza"

Spectrum:
French research institutes Inria and CNRS are working with ScanPyramids to develop an exploration robot that can squeeze through a tiny hole while still maximizing the amount of exploration that it can do once it’s through. The concept that they’ve come up with is a robotic blimp that can be stuffed through a 3.5-centimeter hole, unfold and inflate itself, and then explore large areas before deflating and escaping again.
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"UK surgeon admits signing initials on patients’ livers"

"pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts of assault"
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Star Wars nightmare fuel

Max Rebo? They're legs, not arms.
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William Gibson posted new material from the world of The Peripheral



Related, saw this today, too:

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Star Wars posters by Juan Esteban Rodriguez



His Jedi poster is available.
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Three of Swords pin



Available here.
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Monstrous bus advertisement

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Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Hanukah-themed Star Wars characters

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From the Jean-Claude van Johnson premier

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Jaguar vs. Caiman

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"thousands of Russians deployed to Syria by a shadowy, private military contractor known as Wagner, which the government doesn't talk about"

"thousands of Russians deployed to Syria by a shadowy, private military contractor known as Wagner, which the government doesn’t talk about"
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American Gods

TA:
Gyms provide ritual and community, serving as a sort of religion. They also promote values American culture already worships—capitalism and overwork.
BF:
"In terms of contact and relationship with YouTube, honestly, the algorithm is the thing we had a relationship with since the beginning. That's what got us out there and popular,” Tanner told BuzzFeed News. “We learned to fuel it and do whatever it took to please the algorithm.”
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"Ron's Ron shirt was just as bad as Ron himself."

"We used predictive keyboards trained on all seven books to ghostwrite this spellbinding new Harry Potter chapter":
"Death Eaters are on top of the castle!" Ron bleated, quivering. Ron was going to be spiders. He just was. He wasn't proud of that, but it was going to be hard to not have spiders all over his body after all is said and done.
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"Why Melania, Ivanka and Jared's mayoral election votes didn't count "

NYDN:
the First Lady did not sign the envelope she put the ballot in

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[Ivanka] didn’t mail it until Election Day—which was too late to be counted

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Jared Kushner, didn't mail his back at all

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Officials said the President’s ballot was fine. But that was before the Daily News pointed out to an official that the date of birth on his application was a full month off.
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"Welcome to SportsBusiness Journal’s 12th annual rundown of the gift packages provided by college football's bowl game organizing committees"

New Mexico Bowl: Oakley sunglasses; Oakley 5-Speed backpack; Lit tumbler; beanie; Gildan stadium blanket; cap; Fidget Spinner
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"Starbucks' [internet provider] Hijacked People's Laptops to Mine Cryptocurrency"

“As soon as we were alerted of the situation in this specific store last week, we took swift action to ensure our internet provider resolved the issue and made the changes needed in order to ensure our customers could use Wi-Fi in our store safely"
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"When his wife got a traffic ticket, he tried to fight the system with science. It turned into a battle over free speech"

LAT:
using a stopwatch and two high-definition video cameras, Jรคrlstrรถm ran his own tests on the intersection where his wife was ticketed. He said his findings showed that the intersection’s yellow lights ran on average 0.14 seconds, or 4%, shorter than advertised. He complained to the city.

...

But some of the biggest interest came from the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying, which regulates engineers in Oregon. After the board received an email from Jรคrlstrรถm in 2015 presenting his idea, it launched an investigation — into Jรคrlstrรถm.

On Nov. 1, 2016, the board sent him an civil notice finding that he was practicing engineering without a license and fined him $500.

“By asserting to a public body in correspondence that he is an (‘excellent’) engineer, and asserting to the public media in correspondence that he is a (‘Swedish’) engineer, Jarlstrom held himself out as, and implied that he is, an engineer,” the board wrote in its citation.
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San Francisco's new acting mayor is London Breed

SFC:
She grew up about half a mile from City Hall in a housing project that was later razed by the city. She often speaks in public about growing up poor and surrounded by violence. Her brother is in prison and her younger sister died of a drug overdose.

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It would have been difficult to predict such a change in political fortune months ago when Breed was challenged from the left for re-election. Her district, which includes the Haight-Ashbury, Hayes Valley, Fillmore and Western Addition neighborhoods, has traditionally been one of the most liberal in San Francisco. Frustrations among voters focused on issues like the scarcity of affordable housing and a perception that City Hall’s moderate wing, Breed included, caters to tech companies and gentrifiers.

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If Breed is ultimately elected mayor, her path will be akin to how Feinstein became acting mayor in December 1978 after the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.
Related: "Robots are being used to deter homeless people from setting up camp in San Francisco"
since the SPCA started guarding its facilities with the robot — known as K9 — a month ago, the homeless encampments have dwindled

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Knightscope rents out the robots for $7 an hour — less than a security guard's hourly wage
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"At 310,296 words, [the Alabama constitution] is 12 times longer than the average state constitution, 44 times longer than the U.S. Constitution, and is the longest and most amended constitution still operative anywhere in the world"

Wikipedia says, "This supported provisions that essentially disenfranchised most blacks and poor whites, and further limited local autonomy"

Related:



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Free rickshaw rides courtesy of Google

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Thor Ragnarok Hela concept art (with a lot of thorns)

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"The original Watergate lock that burglars picked open is going to auction"

WaPo:
Where’s the lock been all this time? Locksmith James Rednowers first got a hold of it in 1972, according to the Los Angeles-based auction house handling its sale. Rednowers had been called in to replace the busted lock the day after the break-in and decided to keep the original — for the culture, we assume. A few years later, Watergate superintendent Jim Herrald asked Rednowers for the lock as a memento. Now the piece of history will head to the highest bidder.

"some of the [speedskating's] biggest powers seem to be under the sway of a new and far less scientifically rigorous belief about their equipment: Blue is the fastest color"

"The attire was particularly jarring for Norway, whose long history of speedskating prowess has been attained in red — always in red."
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"Two of Chicago’s top social media personalities, who happen to have very similar feeds, are clashing about who’s copying whom"

"We combed the two Instagram feeds to find the most recent posts that mirror each other."
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Monday, December 11, 2017

Star Trek HeroClix Away Team: The Original Series



Booster bricks are $22 off at Amazon.
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Mobile ad with fake hair

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"Photos of bullied kid’s family shows them waving Confederate flags and attacking Kaepernick"

"A number of athletes and celebrities rallied around . . . a young boy from Tennessee who has been a victim of bullying at school, after a video posted by his mother went viral."
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Dallas Creamer, Oralee Hespenheide, and the rest of The 2018 Men's and Women's Lacrosse All-Name Teams

IL.
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Universal Studios had a Creature From the Black Lagoon musical





From Wikipedia:
Creature From the Black Lagoon: The Musical was a live performance show formerly located at the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park in Los Angeles, California. It debuted on July 1, 2009, replacing Fear Factor LIVE. As of March 9, 2010 this show was officially closed

...

The show began with a clip from The Today Show with Matt Lauer, talking about the Creature
Here's the full show:



Related snow globes are available at Amazon:

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"According to screenshots from the YouTuber’s account reviewed by BuzzFeed News, in the past two months, Ted made more than $100,000 on his videos — after YouTube’s 45% cut"

BF:
And then, suddenly, YouTube pulled advertising on the channel — with what Ted described as “no communication, notification, [or] reason … and no way to appeal or request review” — as part of its effort to remove and/or demonetize (remove ads from) hundreds of thousands of questionable and exploitative kids’ videos on the platform.
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Sunday, December 10, 2017

Cracked pavement FAQ

A post shared by Michael Pederson (@miguelmarquezoutside) on
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"Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon will submit an explanation on his luxury watch and diamond ring to the National Anti-Corruption Commission Tuesday"

"The Richard Mille watch and diamond ring came under the media spotlight when Gen Prawit raised his right hand on which he wore the items to shield his face from the sun during a group photo session for the new cabinet on Monday."
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Savannah College of Art and Design "gives [its president] a salary and a lifestyle unheard of in higher education"

AJC:
Between 2011 and 2015, the school paid her $19.9 million in salary and other compensation. During the same five years, Harvard University paid its president less than one-third as much. Wallace’s pay spiked to $9.6 million in 2014 - more than any other president of a nonprofit or public university in the United States. She made $2.1 million in the 2016 fiscal year.

In its tax returns, SCAD says performance reviews and a consultant’s recommendations justify Wallace’s compensation. But the benefits don’t stop with her paycheck. SCAD provides her with a restored 19th-century house in Savannah, pays her an allowance for a home in Atlanta and maintains a residence that she uses in the Provence region of southern France. Wallace travels on SCAD’s private jet or, when she takes commercial flights, in business class. To help Wallace focus on work, SCAD’s board decided in 2011 to pay for an assistant to manage her personal affairs.

For Wallace, the personal and the professional are barely distinguishable.

Wallace and 13 members of her family have worked at SCAD during the past 20 years, with combined earnings of $60 million. Wallace made millions more through a real-estate transaction involving SCAD.
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Rejected Thor Ragnarok monster design got a Lego minifig

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Saturday, December 9, 2017

The Vikings



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Ready Player One poster features very long legs




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"Second Man Comes Forward As Rabbit Rescuer In Famous Wildfire Video"

"This information doesn’t mean that Gonzales lied about saving a rabbit: It’s possible that more than one rabbit rescue occurred that night"

Trailer for next year's Spider-Verse animated movie



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"Sometimes when kids look like they're daydreaming, it's because they are, and we can't allow that possibility"

"Students who stop tracking are prodded both by their teachers and by their peers, who are expected to point out classmates who aren’t looking at them when they are speaking."
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Friday, December 8, 2017

Mars Attacks vinyl brain



Available tomorrow.
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"Prominent appeals court Judge Alex Kozinski accused of sexual misconduct"

WaPo:
Bond is one of six women — all former clerks or externs in the 9th Circuit — who alleged to The Washington Post in recent weeks that Kozinski, now 67 and still serving as a judge on the court, subjected them to a range of inappropriate sexual conduct or comments

...

In a statement, Kozinski said: “I have been a judge for 35 years and during that time have had over 500 employees in my chambers. I treat all of my employees as family and work very closely with most of them. I would never intentionally do anything to offend anyone and it is regrettable that a handful have been offended by something I may have said or done.”
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"One of the largest football survivor pools was shut down this week after federal agents seized documentation and the money the pool organizers collected, sources told ESPN"

ESPN:
Several players of Ron & Mike's Football Pool, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, and had access to the website from the beginning of the season, said there were at least five NFL survivor pools this season with at least $2.5 million at stake to the winners.

...

The two weren't completely covert about their operation. Kroenengold filed to trademark the name "Ron & Mike's" for survival pools in 2011. He received the trademark in 2012.
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Christ at the UN

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