Wednesday, September 30, 2020

"FBI data shows Honolulu has one of the worst records in the country when it comes to solving property crimes as well as violent crimes"

Civil Beat:
Overall, approximately 32,000 serious crimes were reported to the Honolulu Police Department last year, and only 2,317 were cleared, the FBI data shows.

That’s a clearance rate of 7%.

"Japan's Tokyo Stock Exchange halted all trading Thursday because of a[n unspecified] technical glitch"

"It's not clear when the exchange will be operational again."

Italian warship deployed to stop migrants, found to have smuggled cigarettes and Cialis

NYT:
“I felt like Dante descending into the inferno,” said Lt. Col. Gabriele Gargano, the police officer who led the raid and a subsequent investigation. “I’ve seen many smuggling busts — but 70 sacks of cigarettes on a military vessel? I never saw that in my whole life.”

The bust has tarnished what European leaders have portrayed as a tough-minded, but principled, effort to curb migration to the continent.

...

Even before its sailors began smuggling contraband, the Caprera had apparently violated the terms of a United Nations arms embargo on at least three occasions, according to the documents. The embargo bars foreign actors from supplying arms to any faction involved in the Libyan civil war and repairing military equipment.
The investigation has spread to a second and third ship.

A profile of the 38-Year-Old "Paparazzi Who Follows Around Popular Teen TikTokers For A Living"

Buzzfeed:
Greene went all in on becoming a full-time paparazzi. But when he realized that a lot of his footage of B- or C-list celebrities (like Christina Milian and Jenna Dewan) was being turned down by tabloid giants, he began posting them to YouTube in 2014. These B- or C-list sightings would gain an audience online, and so Greene began posting more clips of what he couldn't sell. That's how the Hollywood Fix was born.

At the start of the pandemic earlier this year, his channel seemed to take a dramatic shift away from capturing traditional celebrities and onto social media celebrities. Over the past few months, the Hollywood Fix has exclusively pivoted to TikTok stars. Greene said this wasn't a calculated move as much as it was a consequence of COVID-19.

"When you scroll through [my feed] over the years, it's all mainstream celebrities like Jennifer Garner or Hilary Duff," he said. "But when COVID hit, these guys left town and just disappeared. All the celebrities just dried out. I'd go out and work an eight-hour shift and come home with an empty memory chip."

He said it seemed like the only notable people in Los Angeles who were still in town and out and about were influencers and TikTokers.

"I said, Let me shoot kids that have millions of fans on TikTok and let me see how it'll do," he said. "It just blew up. It's almost like following a high school drama but in real life."

...

When BuzzFeed News asked Greene about these concerns, and where he draws the line, he said he sticks to standard paparazzi rules.

Abbie Richards continues to refine her conspiracy chart









Approaching "asteroid" might be be a booster rocket from the 60's

CNN:
The object is likely to enter into a distant orbit around Earth in late November

...

"I suspect this newly discovered object 2020 SO to be an old rocket booster because it is following an orbit about the Sun that is extremely similar to Earth's, nearly circular, in the same plane, and only slightly farther away the Sun at its farthest point,"

...

He said that correlates with the launch of Surveyor 2 on September 20, 1966. That mission was designed to have a soft landing on the Moon, but a failure led to the spacecraft crashing, Chodas said. The Centaur rocket that was used to boost the spacecraft passed by the Moon and went into orbit near the Sun and has not been seen again
Speaking of rockets, check out this one based on a The Far Side strip:

Social skills training











If there was wrestling in Annihilation

Flower art by Azuma Makoto:


















New tee at Last Exit to Nowhere based on Alex Garland's "Devs"



There's also a new Citizen Kane t-shirt.

Today's funny posts







(99 cents at Amazon)















































*More funny posts.

Cakes that look like islands; A memorial that requires a descent; Freddy Krueger sneakers