Sea otter species consuming concentrated sea urchin diets can exhibit pink/purple bone discolouration due to echinochrome staining. https://t.co/73tpSbDFQA
— Andronowski Lab (@AndronowskiLab) February 1, 2021
Sunday, January 31, 2021
Sea otter bones sometimes turn purple from eating sea urchins
Today's funny posts
A highlight that showed up in a compilation vid of Randy Johnson accidentally putting on a Giants hat during a benches clearing incident while playing for the Dbacks in 1999. He would play for the Giants 10 years later @UniWatch pic.twitter.com/D4DjWN0tD0
— Casey (@KCNep95) January 28, 2021
The making of "Operation Odessa" is as absurdly improbable as the story detailed in the movie
The movie is on Netflix and is about three hustlers, including a Jewish mobster that calls himself "Tarzan," procuring increasingly more powerful Russian military vehicles for the Colombian drug cartel. (Every single word seems like a lie, but then they show you photographs...)
CBS interviewed director Tiller Russell:
"I jumped on a plane to Panama with $10,000 taped to my legs knowing I'd have to peel off bribes to get into this prison," explains Russell. "I went out to the prison -- La Joya on the outskirts of Panama City -- where Tarzan was locked up and I paid the guard $1,000 to smuggle me in."
Russell says he had to sprint across a yard full of convicts in order to get to Tarzan's cell.
"It sounded like the worst plan, but I'd come all this way," he says. "I crossed the yard and pushed the door and there was a gregarious, larger-than-life, charismatic lunatic."
Russell calls his few days in the prison "like it was out of 'Mad Max.'"
...
But in spite of all of his efforts, Russell says soon, Fainberg "clammed up" after Russian mobsters got wind that he was talking to a filmmaker.
"I said, 'I smuggled myself into a f**king Panamanian prison. What do you mean?' He told me to go to hell and we left on kind of bitter terms, but we stayed in touch over the years," says Russell. Russell adds that Fainberg would send him videos of prison riots or new convicts coming in with texts like, "Merry Christmas from Tarzan."
Years later, Russell says he got an email with the subject line "Jailbreak."
"When I opened it, it said, 'I busted out of prison in Panama, crossed into Costa Rica, caught a boat to Cuba, repatriated to Moscow. Let's make a movie,'" he says.
Model of electricity consumption made using 300 cards; How about a Twitter style-verified badge for your home; Lenticular Putin
A model of electricity consumption in Manchester, 1945-1955: individually inspectable 2D records assembled into a 3D volume. This is unspeakably fabulous https://t.co/GygJZNTGxp via @dancohen pic.twitter.com/oT0aUsfgEq
— Robin Sloan (@robinsloan) January 29, 2021
You can now get a Verified Badge crest on your Bay Area home if you're an influencer, public figure, or represent a brand. https://t.co/SyoURdSGe7 pic.twitter.com/H1Sz3gwBdL
— Writer for Black Mirror (@djbaskin) January 30, 2021
Pretty slick souvenir I bought in Moscow in 2011 pic.twitter.com/OZMYOOLcx4
— Ranjan (@ranjanxroy) December 31, 2020
In which Stephen King, while filming his directorial debut MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, learns from his DP, George A. Romero and David Lynch about the 180 axis. pic.twitter.com/jMsHZ4TG7k
— Scott Wampler™ (@ScottWamplerBMD) January 29, 2021
Mummy in Sarcophagus paper toy; Gideon and Harrow fan art; 28 years of drawing Rogue
Me and the amazing designer @FoldUpToys made a papercraft toy together!
— castpixel (@castpixel) January 25, 2021
Enjoy the "Embalmed Queen".
Download here, for free: https://t.co/oHeqAAjvNU pic.twitter.com/Nsm5yZAyPD
“Death first to vultures and scavengers!”
— BanishedPotato (@BS_artsss) January 24, 2021
Gideon was meant to have her rapier out but i forget, oh well. #GideonTheNinth pic.twitter.com/7QyyW0iJgK
28 years of drawing Rogue, sugah! ❌ pic.twitter.com/d8hRzGuzXF
— Russell Dauterman (@rdauterman) January 26, 2021
Saturday, January 30, 2021
Inauguration Bernie Sanders modded into Battlefront 2, Resident Evil, and more games
STOP SOMEONE MODDED BERNIE SANDERS INTO RESIDENT EVIL 7 IM SCREAMING pic.twitter.com/ktU9daFTzB
— Ziva the Diva (@ziva_thediva) January 30, 2021
I checked out @ToastedShoes Tiktok page, and was not disappointed. 😂 10/10 would recommend the follow pic.twitter.com/6dNZXnhXjm
— wr3ckin_it (@wr3ckin_it) January 30, 2021
Chilling story about a woman that uses anonymous blogs and complaint sites like Ripoff Report to destroy the reputations of people
Kashmir Hill's latest, a story about one prolific woman, and the internet giants that encourage the behavior. Also, it features the phrase, "waterfall of maggots."
"100 Years of the Best American Short Stories" is $1.99 today
For the centennial celebration of this annual series, The Best American Short Stories, master of the form Lorrie Moore selects forty stories from the more than two thousand that were published in previous editions. Series editor Heidi Pitlor recounts behind-the-scenes anecdotes and examines, decade by decade, the trends captured over a hundred years. Together, the stories and commentary offer an extraordinary guided tour through a century of literature with what Moore calls “all its wildnesses of character and voice.”
These forty stories represent their eras but also stand the test of time.
Today's funny posts
"Do Jews start forest fires with Space Lasers?" is a wedge issue for today's Republican Party.
— pillsy (@DucksForDuckGod) January 29, 2021
This week's best Warhammer 40k miniatures (and other hobby creations)
Cyber-punk neon acid rain slickers. This millenniums hot item. #necromunda #gamesworkshop #warhammer40k #housevansaar #houseofartifice #kitbash #kitbashing #warhammerkitbash #WarhammerCommunity #warmongers #convertingnecromunda pic.twitter.com/lcDkTsvQaz
— @underhiver (@underhiver) January 25, 2021
Friday, January 29, 2021
Portraits of U.S. Presidents, modernized
Modern Presidents
— Magdalene Visaggio (@MagsVisaggs) January 29, 2021
George Washington pic.twitter.com/CURJQB0kap
Thomas Jefferson pic.twitter.com/Gen1xb4kmK
— Magdalene Visaggio (@MagsVisaggs) January 29, 2021
Did another pass at Lincoln. pic.twitter.com/PdT4QVpMbn
— Magdalene Visaggio (@MagsVisaggs) January 30, 2021
Watch an ambush-style COVID19 lockdown unfold in Hong Kong
everyone in HK wondering which will be the 'lucky' ambush neighborhood tonight at 7 pic.twitter.com/Tney3Gz9aM
— Dr. Trey 時間係扁圆 (@Comparativist) January 29, 2021
Hong Kong fourth wave: how to tell if your neighbourhood is next in line for an ‘ambush-style’ coronavirus lockdownWhile the government has not issued formal guidelines for imposing such lockdowns, its messaging in the lead-up to the last two offers insight into its approachAt present, the most likely candidates for future lockdowns are parts of Jordan, Mong Kok, Hung Hom and Sham Shui Po
Today's funny posts
This is the tiniest crosswalk in France #mildlyinteresting pic.twitter.com/2kN25LoSfK
— Mildly Interesting (@Mildly_Fun) January 25, 2021
Adversarial fashion
"The patterns on the goods in this shop are designed to trigger Automated License Plate Readers, injecting junk data in to the systems"
From a 2019 article about the line and similar efforts:
Elsewhere at the convention, Droogie, a hacker, described a rather less successful way of testing the cybersecurity of license plates: registering a custom license plate with the California department of motor vehicles that read “NULL”, the code used in a number of common database systems used to represent an empty entry.
Unfortunately, rather than giving him the power of administrative invisibility, Droogie experienced almost exactly the opposite outcome, receiving more than $12,000 in driving tickets. Every single speeding ticket for which no valid license plate could be found was assigned to his car. The Los Angeles police department eventually scrapped the tickets but advised the hacker to change his plates, or the same problem would continue to hit him.
Forg cake; Sculpting with sticks and stones; SCP Foundation pendant
never seen a more perfect cake pic.twitter.com/RAXbntKwHT
— Rob N Roll (@thegallowboob) January 25, 2021
Thursday, January 28, 2021
Watch an ally of Navalny play the piano as the police inform her they are about to search her flat
Wow. What a scene from #Russia : Navalny’s doctor Anastasy Vasilyeva plays the Piano as Police search her home.
— Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) January 27, 2021
Part of crackdown in chasing Navalny’s allies ahead of protests planned this weekend: pic.twitter.com/P8c6aU9Iko
Police in Moscow went to the flat of Anastasia Vasilyeva, head of the Russia’s Doctors Alliance trade union and a close ally of Navalny, late on Wednesday.
In a show of quiet defiance, footage of the moment shows Vasilyeva playing Beethoven on a white piano as police inform her they are about to search her flat.
...
In a video she made on Wednesday before being arrested, she called on people to not be afraid and take to the streets on Sunday
The photo is "a celluloid talisman against the vampire of lesbian erasure"
The photograph is of my great-aunt who died two decades before I was born. She is holding her not yet four year old son. It was taken by her lover, Lucia Larranga. It is, all at once, triumph and love and dignity.
— Mark R. Miller (@4T9NER) January 28, 2021
It is a celluloid talisman against the vampire of lesbian erasure that seeks to bury and discard the corpses of their lives and each time I let my eyes fall upon it I can conjure the power of their lives beautifully led. pic.twitter.com/HZyIm8Y630
— Mark R. Miller (@4T9NER) January 28, 2021
Leslie is her name. She was born in 1895 in San Francisco and her mother died before her first birthday. Her mother was Einnim Tucker Miller and she is, I kid you not, interred in a fucking pyramid. pic.twitter.com/MOPeCDZPTD
— Mark R. Miller (@4T9NER) January 28, 2021
Einnim was named after (you will not see this coming) her mother Minnie by spelling the name backwards. I had suggested this tactic to my wife Kiki who violently opposed the idea of children named Kram and Ikik. Yet she is considered to be *fun* at parties and people *like* her.
— Mark R. Miller (@4T9NER) January 28, 2021
By 22 (1917) she had met Lucia Larranga who was ten years older. She fell harder than an inebriated first-time snowboarder. They wanted a child...badly. There was no reciprocal in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination. After what must have been unimaginably agonizing
— Mark R. Miller (@4T9NER) January 28, 2021
deliberations, they decided Leslie must marry a <shudder> man. They settled on Kenneth Moore, a friend and junior army officer getting ready to go fight WWI in France. Leslie laid out the deal: They would marry and once she was pregnant they would divorce. And that’s exactly what
— Mark R. Miller (@4T9NER) January 28, 2021
"Upcrash. A gain so fast and rapid, that it might previously have been thought to be impossible"
HOW GAMESTOP COULD PERMANENTLY CHANGE THE STOCK MARKET
— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) January 28, 2021
In today's @Markets newsletter, I wrote about Gamestop and doʇsǝɯɐפ, and 1987 in reverse
Sign up for the newsletter herehttps://t.co/Pl5nZqsNJq $GME pic.twitter.com/c2skZPm5zG
Here's the story of hedge funds, told in a dress: Let's say you bought a dress at Target for $30. I say to you hey, can I borrow that dress for a few weeks? I'll give you $5, and I'll also give you the dress back. 1/4
— BUST Magazine (@bust_magazine) January 28, 2021
I know this GameStop stuff is funny, but you have to remember this is hurting real people who own multiple boats
— Kevin Farzad (@KevinFarzad) January 27, 2021
The best part of this is referring to Galloway as simply a "marketing professor" https://t.co/8Dy2M89dwY pic.twitter.com/HhNtnXaCwW
— Ranjan (@ranjanxroy) January 28, 2021
https://t.co/SYHGQbRZgc pic.twitter.com/ebQsqo8DMT
— Mike Bird (@Birdyword) January 28, 2021
If you can pump an election you can pump a market.
— Alistair Croll @ localhost (@acroll) January 28, 2021
A friend once told me, “a hedge fund is a company formed to find something that will be illegal, and do it until it is.”
This reminds me of when all those bad dudes got deplatformed from paypal and started using bitcoin, only to get fantastically rich.https://t.co/78kig3ssu9
— Ryan Mac🙃 (@RMac18) January 27, 2021
That said, if this whole thing leads you to discovering the crypto dark money laundering that has financed the alt-right for years, I am very ready to have that conversation!
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) January 28, 2021
NatGeo describes a brand new possible explanation for the Dyatlov Pass Incident
If you're not familiar with the mystery:
the team made camp [in 1959], pitching a large tent on the snowy slopes of Kholat Saykhl, whose name can be interpreted as “Dead Mountain” in the language of the region’s Indigenous Mansi people.
...
When a search team arrived at Kholat Saykhl a few weeks later, the expedition tent was found just barely sticking out of the snow, and it appeared cut open from the inside. The next day, the first of the bodies was found near a cedar tree. Over the next few months, as the snow thawed, search teams gradually uncovered more spine-chilling sights: All nine of the team members’ bodies were scattered around the mountain’s slope, some in a baffling state of undress; some of their skulls and chests had been smashed open; others had eyes missing, and one lacked a tongue.
...
A criminal investigation at the time blamed their deaths on an “unknown natural force,” and the Soviet bureaucracy kept the case quiet.
As NatGeo explains, a team of scientists worked out an explanation for the deaths (and guesses for the more ghastly details):
The scientific investigation came with an added benefit from Puzrin’s wife, who is Russian. “When I told her that I was working on the Dyatlov mystery, for the first time she looked at me with real respect,” he says.
...
To answer that question, the scientists relied on some unorthodox sources of inspiration and information. Gaume explained how, a few years back, he was struck by how well the movement of snow was depicted in the 2013 Disney movie Frozen—so impressed, in fact, that he decided to ask its animators how they pulled it off.
...
Code in hand, the pair then needed realistic values for the forces and pressures the human body could experience in an avalanche. This time, their information came from the automotive industry.
“We discovered that, in the 70s, General Motors (GM) took 100 cadavers and broke their ribs,” says Puzrin, “hitting them with different weights at different velocities” to see what would happen during a car crash.
Click through for their findings. Of course...
Much like the Voynich Manuscript, they “solve” this one out fairly regularly, but this one is so boring and rational, I’d buy it. https://t.co/I5jNfWBbpk
— Kingfisher & Wombat (@UrsulaV) January 29, 2021
Today's funny posts
When you remember something embarrassing you did pic.twitter.com/SjZE6T4VBy
— Sailor Moon Out of Context #BLM (@SailorMoonOoC) January 23, 2021
Filming Samus cosplay; Cursed claw game; Were you one of the 2.4 million people that watched the reveal of this streamer's personalized Fortnite skin?
Another reel try. Shooting @WillowCreative_ as Samus pic.twitter.com/qmVMe1cHkj
— Carlos Adama (@Carlos_Adama) January 21, 2021
(via @Junglecat) pic.twitter.com/I6Wx8V2sUM
— Mike Mika (@MikeJMika) January 25, 2021
2.2 million people are watching him so he can debut his Fortnite skin https://t.co/J5JEv9YVfJ
— Gene Park (@GenePark) January 11, 2021
and there it is. 2.4 million people watching, broke the twitch all time record ever. pic.twitter.com/wdJJUIZDzJ
— Gene Park (@GenePark) January 11, 2021
— No context Mega Man (@nocontxtrockman) January 12, 2021
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
Southern California city council member agreed to plead guilty to taking bribes in exchange for voting to ratify a police union’s contract
LAT:
In court files unsealed Tuesday, [he] admitted that he took $37,900 in bribes from a Baldwin Park police officer in 2018. [He] was serving as the city’s mayor pro tem at the time, and the officer was working undercover for the FBI.
In return for the bribes, [he] voted in March 2018 in favor of a three-year labor contract for the Baldwin Park Police Assn. that was approved by the council and required the city to pay officers $4.4 million, the court papers say.
...
[He] agreed to forfeit $83,145 in cash seized by the FBI, including $62,900 that he had buried in his backyard
...
He has long been a controversial figure in Baldwin Park.
Good podcast about "The Rise of Ukraine's Azov Battalion"
A recent episode of Popular Front:
We speak to journalist Michael Colborne about the rise of the Azov Battalion, a neo-fascist militia in Ukraine that now has a column of tanks and is a member of the National Guard.
Meanwhile, in Australia:
Thirty-eight members of the [a] far right [group] burnt a cross...in western Victoria on Sunday evening. Tourists and locals heard the group chanting “white power” and Nazi slogans.
From 2001, a Michael Lewis profile of the first minor ever to face SEC proceedings for stock-market fraud
(Yes, the article has been discussed at r/wallstreetbets.) Anyway:On Sept. 20, 2000, the Securities and Exchange Commission settled its case against a 15-year-old high-school student named Jonathan Lebed. The S.E.C.'s news release explained that Jonathan -- the first minor ever to face proceedings for stock-market fraud -- had used the Internet to promote stocks from his bedroom in the northern New Jersey suburb of Cedar Grove. Armed only with accounts at A.O.L. and E*Trade, the kid had bought stock and then, ''using multiple fictitious names,'' posted hundreds of messages on Yahoo Finance message boards recommending that stock to others. He had done this 11 times between September 1999 and February 2000, the S.E.C. said, each time triggering chaos in the stock market....When I first read the newspaper reports last fall, I didn't understand them. It wasn't just that I didn't understand what the kid had done wrong; I didn't understand what he had done....Jonathan slouched in. Even that verb does not capture the mixture of sullenness and truculence with which he entered the room. He was long and thin and dressed in the prison costume of the American suburban teenager: pants too big, sneakers gaping, a pirate hoop dangling from one ear....he created his own Web site devoted to companies with small market capitalization -- penny stocks. The Web site came to be known as Stock-dogs.com....''People who trade stocks, trade based on what they feel will move and they can trade for profit. Nobody makes investment decisions based on reading financial filings. Whether a company is making millions or losing millions, it has no impact on the price of the stock. Whether it is analysts, brokers, advisors, Internet traders, or the companies, everybody is manipulating the market. If it wasn't for everybody manipulating the market, there wouldn't be a stock market at all. . . .''As it happens, those last two sentences stand for something like the opposite of the founding principle of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
The GameStop stock situation is basically Exile Pitbull but with the global financial system instead of a Walmart in Alaska.
— Adi Robertson (@thedextriarchy) January 27, 2021
Not as funny when you realize a lot of these hedge fund managers have secret families to feed.
— logan bartlett (@loganbartlett) January 28, 2021
Today's funny posts
if you try to correct my grammar, i will think fewer of you
— Sammy (@thesammyhannah) January 24, 2021
Wandavision makeup; "Open Water" painting; Control mod
ZAYNNAVISION #WandaVision pic.twitter.com/EOuReOqXYU
— ZAY BAY SLAYS🖤 (@Itszaybaybay) January 23, 2021
“Open Water,” this is an oil painting on canvas by Ryan Ortner.
— Diane Doniol-Valcroze (@ddoniolvalcroze) January 17, 2021
(https://t.co/OQ4EStPXzr) pic.twitter.com/bME0zLInS8
Forbidden Moon
— A Misthios In Training (@misthiosvp) January 13, 2021
Mods by reg2k, @ilikedetectives, and I.
Camera range unlocker by ilikedetectives#ControlRemedy pic.twitter.com/psJ32AV560
Some shameless self promo mods done with @ilikedetectives. All found on my page, and some found on Nexus Mods.https://t.co/n0fgN1ro0A#ControlRemedy pic.twitter.com/lBLRFt1FA7
— A Misthios In Training (@misthiosvp) January 9, 2021
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
A detailed discussion of whether the subreddit's manipulation of Gamestop stock is illegal
In today's newsletter, Matt Levine goes into great detail on various possible theories of prosecution. The TLDR:
I guess my answer would be that it might be illegal in all sorts of ways, but it is not obviously illegal, and if the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission were to go after WallStreetBets for this stuff they will be breaking new ground and going beyond their previous cases. I do not want to say “this stuff is all fine,” but I will say I am not all that bothered by it.
He also discusses the new Leon Black/Jeffrey Epstein revelations:
After Epstein was arrested on sex-trafficking charges and died in jail, there was quite a bit of wild speculation about where his money came from, and specifically about why billionaires were so willing to pay him so much money for somewhat vague services. After all that speculation, finding out that Leon Black paid Epstein $150 million for differentiated advice that really saved him $2 billion of taxes is in some ways the most boring possible explanation.
At the same time … what? Why was Epstein, who was not a lawyer or an accountant or a college graduate for that matter, so good at tax? I actually don’t have too much trouble believing this—in my experience, some people are just born with a natural gift for tax structuring, and need surprisingly little formal training to achieve their potential—but it is fascinating. Black would go his lawyers and say “hey my guy found this way to save a billion dollars in taxes, is it legal,” and the fancy lawyers in the Paul Weiss tax department would say “wow, sure is, this is amazing, why didn’t we think of this, this guy is a Michelangelo of tax minimization”? I don’t know, it’s just a weird niche. Also what did Black actually do to save all those taxes?
More on WallStreetBets:
The GameStop squeeze is like if some dumb idiot on here announced that he made a bet that he wouldn’t get ratio’d and then everybody heard about it and replied all at once to take all his money.
— vint SERP (@ZackMaril) January 26, 2021
TIRED: guy fawkes mask holding up a “we are the 99%” sign
— sarah jeong (@sarahjeong) January 26, 2021
WIRED: a subreddit short squeezing an investment firm for the lulz
Today's funny posts
Remains his best commercial ever. The perfect capper. pic.twitter.com/LnbxYD05vJ
— Jabari Ali Davis (@JabariDavisNBA) January 25, 2021
Monday, January 25, 2021
Dutch pandemic enthusiasts burned down a COVID-19 testing center
NPR:
Protesters opposed to coronavirus lockdowns in several Dutch cities clashed with police over the weekend after new restrictions went into effect.
Videos of the demonstrations posted online show large crowds of people — many not wearing masks — using bicycles to build barricades along city streets, and hurling rocks at officers and passing police vans. Shops were broken into and looted.
...
In the city of Urk, northeast of Amsterdam, police reported that protesters torched a COVID-19 testing center.
Today's funny posts
When Bilbo posed the riddle "What do I have in my pocket," it's weird that Gollum didn't guess "My Precious" considering it's the only thing that's been on his mind for a thousand years.
— Sean Kelly (@StorySlug) January 14, 2021
World's smallest park; Tiny rat playing a trumpet; Kaiju island
the question is when am I NOT thinking about the tiny rat playing a tiny trumpet pic.twitter.com/Y1SLCmFjGl
— Hannah Clements-Patrick (@hannah_cp_) January 22, 2021