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Adorable toddler sees no problem with cookies. [SLYT]
comment posted at 6:31 PM on Mar-20-14

"I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it," he says, dismissing all further queries with a swat of his left hand. "It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection." Newsweek claims to have found Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin.
comment posted at 5:25 AM on Mar-8-14

Dozens of armed men in Russian-marked military uniforms occupied an airport in the capital of Ukraine's strategic Crimea region early Friday, Obama warns Russia against any military intervention in Ukraine. But what is so dangerous about Crimea, and what is 'The Budapest Memorandum?'
comment posted at 7:58 AM on Mar-4-14

At 5:00pm Pacific Time, Ethiopian Flight 702, a Boeing 767-300 (registered ET-AMF) was flying over Sudan when it started squawking 7500. The transponder code, is supposed to indicate a “hijacking.” With less than 25 minutes of fuel remaining, it landed safely in Geneva.
comment posted at 4:35 AM on Feb-17-14

Why free speech loses in India “The Hindus: An Alternative History,” an eight-hundred-page book by Wendy Doniger, an eminent professor of religion at the University of Chicago, will be removed from Indian book shops. Penguin Books India, which first published the book, in 2009, signed an out-of-court settlement with an advocacy group, the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, who claim to be defending 'the sentiments of Hindus all over the world.'"
comment posted at 8:30 PM on Feb-15-14

Americans Try To Place European Countries On A Map, Brits have similar results attempting to place US States on a map.
comment posted at 8:12 AM on Feb-14-14
comment posted at 8:36 AM on Feb-14-14

A few months ago, my husband and I decided to mix our books together. We had known each other for ten years, lived together for six, been married for five.
comment posted at 4:34 PM on Feb-11-14

A $3.5 million estate for sale in Sherwood Oregon, outside of Portland, comes complete with almost 20 acres of land, a media room, a home gym--and its own miniature railroad.
comment posted at 11:19 PM on Jan-25-14

We have the unique instance of a sitting Chief Minister of Delhi labelling himself an anarchist, sitting in protest in the heart of the city, while claiming to conduct government business from the site of his protest and conveniently holding the nation to ransom by threatening to disrupt the the country's annual Republic Day parade due to be held in 5 days.

All this over the unlawful and allegedly racially motivated attempt by his Law Minister to arrest and humiliate some African women on prostitution and drug charges without first showing cause. And they've been brazen enough to forge a letter from the Ugandan embassy supporting their allegations. The professional diplomats are less than pleased.
comment posted at 11:14 PM on Jan-20-14
comment posted at 11:28 PM on Jan-20-14
comment posted at 7:58 AM on Jan-21-14

Contempt of Cop Activists range from hard-conservative gun rights types, who carry copies of the Constitution in their pockets, to left-leaning civil liberties advocates. In both cases, they triumphantly upload video trophies of their confrontations to the internet. Quite a few show "checkpoint refusals" at roadblocks erected by police looking for drunken drivers, or by federal agents hunting illegal aliens. Courts here have held that police have the right to operate such stops. But the courts have also ruled that citizens are free to remain silent, and can refuse to allow searches and ignore orders to submit to "secondary inspections" unless police detain them — which requires the higher hurdle of reasonable suspicion or probable cause to believe an offence has been committed.
comment posted at 9:10 PM on Jan-20-14

Christmas is Winning the War on Christmas
comment posted at 5:40 AM on Dec-26-13

Last month, an innocent video of Japanese celebricat Maru climbing a ladder was defaced with a dick pic in the comments (NSFW ASCII art). The Internet's favorite feline was the latest casualty in a hurricane of spam, links to viruses, ASCII art and other flying debris that has descended on the YouTube comments section ever since Google forced all commenters to adopt Google+ accounts.
comment posted at 4:35 AM on Nov-28-13

When Did Two-Strapping Get Cooler Than One-Strapping?
comment posted at 1:26 AM on Nov-3-13

Accidental Rewilding - In places once thick with farms and cities, human dispossession and war has cleared the ground for nature to return

The forest had entered a cycle Tomaž had not seen before, in which many of the giants had perished. Some had died where they stood, and remained upright, reamed with beetle and woodpecker holes, sprouting hoof fungus and razor strop. They looked as if a whisper of wind could blow them down. Others now stretched across the rocks and craters, sometimes blocking our path, sometimes suspended above our heads. Among the trunks lying on the ground, some were so thick that I could scarcely see over them. Where they had fallen, thickets of saplings crowded into the light. Seeing the profusion of fungus and insect life the dead wood harboured, I was reminded of the old ecologists’ aphorism: there is more life in dead trees than there is in living trees. The tidy-minded forestry so many nations practise deprives many species of their habitats.

by George Monbiot
comment posted at 9:42 PM on Oct-25-13
comment posted at 4:44 AM on Oct-26-13

"My students are funny. Sometimes, it's intentional."
comment posted at 7:29 PM on Oct-25-13

Mixed Marriages in China a Labour of Love
comment posted at 3:53 AM on Oct-24-13

Which (US) state matches your personality? A fun little quiz based on an exhaustive psychological study of American attitudes.
comment posted at 4:48 PM on Oct-23-13

The Sound of Terror: Phenomenology of a Drone Strike

Opponents of drone strikes say they violate international law and have caused unacknowledged civilian deaths. Proponents insist they actually save the lives of both U.S. soldiers, who would otherwise be deployed in dangerous ground operations, and of civilians, because of the drone’s capacity to survey and strike more precisely than combat. If the alternative is a prolonged and messy ground operation, the advantage of drone strikes in terms of casualties is indisputable, and it is not my intention to dispute it here. But the terms of this debate give a one-sided view of both the larger financial and political costs of drones, as well as the less than lethal but nonetheless chronic and intense harm continuous strikes wage on communities.

comment posted at 7:52 PM on Oct-19-13

How the internet is killing the traditional nastaliq script form of Urdu, and how Windows 8 might save it.
comment posted at 9:26 PM on Oct-13-13

The 29 Stages of a Twitterstorm
comment posted at 8:32 PM on Oct-11-13

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has been awarded the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize, with the Norwegian Nobel Committee saying, "Recent events in Syria, where chemical weapons have again been put to use, have underlined the need to enhance the efforts to do away with such weapons."
comment posted at 8:49 AM on Oct-11-13

Why I Stay Closeted In Asia (SLBF)

I denied it, as my father and sister begged me to.

I couldn't exaggerate to you how much my mother's face lit up, or how much I wanted, for a shameful second, for my lie to be true. I began to tell her a story, got into the groove, told it with what could be called pizzazz, or maybe just mercy. A monthlong fling with a Korean girl became a year ("I liked her; she had a cocaine problem"). Immediately she laughed with relief.

"I wouldn't know how to deal if you were, you know, that" she said.

comment posted at 4:03 AM on Oct-10-13

Your WTF moment from the Indian State of Kerala's Tourism Board
comment posted at 5:49 PM on Oct-8-13

"In New York City, if you yell “where do I get the F train?” at someone they will tell you, they might even STOP to tell you. If you ask them “Excuse me, I was wondering if you have a moment, I’m from out of town and my trying to find the F train, so if you could possibly…” If you set up your question with all that, they will have walked away from you after the fifth word.
In Seattle, if you are pushing your car for some reason, men will appear without a word and help you push. You’ll be pushing, and the next thing you know, there are men on either side of you." -- Cultural Secrets that I Know
comment posted at 5:47 AM on Oct-6-13

She's the most famous woman in the world you've never heard of. The Overexposed Model is a blog dedicated to collecting appearances of a mysterious stock photography model whose smiling face has sold eyeglasses in Greece, healthcare in Peru, oral gel in Malaysia, Jamba Juice in the US, radio stations in Germany, and countless daily deal websites. Its readers report seeing the model almost everywhere they go.
comment posted at 7:30 AM on Oct-4-13

The Top 80 Highlights of the World according to Michael Spencer Bown, a Calgarian who may lay claim to the title of 'the most extensively travelled person in human history'.
comment posted at 9:58 AM on Oct-4-13

White Collars Turn Blue: "But computers are proficient at analyzing symbols; it is the messiness of the real world that they have trouble with. Furthermore, symbols can be transmitted easily to Asmara or La Paz and analyzed there for a fraction of the cost in Boston. Therefore, many of the jobs that once required a college degree have been eliminated... So enrollment in colleges and universities has dropped almost two-thirds since its peak at the turn of the century. The prestigious universities coped by reverting to an older role. Today a place like Harvard is, as it was in the 19th century, more of a social institution than a scholarly one -- a place for children of the wealthy to refine their social graces and befriend others of their class... While business gurus were proclaiming the new dominance of creativity and innovation over mere production, the growing ease with which information was transmitted and reproduced made it harder for creators to profit from their creations... How, then, could creativity be made to pay? The answer was already becoming apparent a century ago: creations must make money indirectly by promoting sales of something else."
comment posted at 3:53 AM on Sep-22-13

The history of the most baffling element of the employment dance - The Cover Letter. (The Atlantic)
comment posted at 2:34 AM on Sep-12-13

Canadian family lives like it's 1986 - "No computers, no tablets, no smart phones, no fancy coffee machines, no Internet, no cable, and – from the point of view of many tech-dependent folks – no life."
comment posted at 6:43 PM on Sep-6-13

An Indian college student lists, originally on Quora, the things he found unusual about the US.
comment posted at 7:49 AM on Sep-1-13

Fifty years ago, another bus-centric race dispute took place. Despite "Just 12 miles away in Bath, black crews were working on buses. London Transport recruitment officers had travelled to Barbados specifically to invite workers to come to the capital" ...non-whites found it impossible to obtain employment working on buses in Bristol, England.
comment posted at 7:46 AM on Aug-27-13

The Russian Army Chorus performs "Skyfall"
comment posted at 9:17 PM on Aug-24-13

Glenn Greenwald's partner was detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours , his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles confiscated. Glenn Greenwald calls it a failed attempt at intimidation. "...to start detaining the family members and loved ones of journalists is simply despotic. Even the Mafia had ethical rules against targeting the family members..."
comment posted at 1:27 AM on Aug-19-13

For over five years, journalist and TV presenter Ding Yu headed up a  massively popular Chinese TV talk show. Every week, She would sit down with convicted murderers and interview them about their life and crimes, before they were taken out and put to death by either firing squad or lethal injection. The show, "Interviews Before Execution", was taken off the air in March 2012.
comment posted at 1:50 AM on Jul-25-13

Nate Silver will move FiveThirtyEight to ESPN when his contract with the New York Times expires in late August. Silver's new site will look to Bill Simmons' Grantland as a model for existing under ESPN's umbrella. His new move could be "genius," with a role at ABCNews and a larger audience, but did the New York Times know what it had in Silver? ESPN press release & Nate Silver 2.0 quote
comment posted at 9:00 PM on Jul-23-13

Plagued by the realities threatening many retail stores, Sears also faces a unique problem (alternate link): [CEO Eddie] Lampert. Lampert runs Sears like a hedge fund portfolio, with dozens of autonomous businesses competing for his attention and money. An outspoken advocate of free-market economics and fan of the novelist Ayn Rand, he created the model because he expected the invisible hand of the market to drive better results. If the company’s leaders were told to act selfishly, he argued, they would run their divisions in a rational manner, boosting overall performance.
comment posted at 7:00 AM on Jul-13-13

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly for this month's cover story, Andrew Garfield, the current star of the rebooted Spider-Man movie series, offered a new take the character's love interest:

“I was kind of joking, but kind of not joking about MJ,” he tells EW. “And I was like, ‘What if MJ is a dude?’ Why can’t we discover that Peter is exploring his sexuality? It’s hardly even groundbreaking!…So why can’t he be gay? Why can’t he be into boys?” Garfield even has an actor in mind: “I’ve been obsessed with Michael B. Jordan since The Wire. He’s so charismatic and talented. It’d be even better—we’d have interracial bisexuality!”

comment posted at 4:24 PM on Jul-10-13

The Dorfbahn Serfaus is arguably the tiniest subway system in the world (technically, an underground funicular), built to alleviate congestion in the tiny ski resort town of Serfaus, Austria (pop. 1,081). The line is just 1.3 km long with 4 rather picturesque stops. Bonus video (German).
comment posted at 5:19 PM on Jul-9-13

The first official gameplay video for Grand Theft Auto V has been released. The highly anticipated open-world game, which lets you control 3 different characters, will be released in September for the PS3 and XBox 360.
comment posted at 5:28 PM on Jul-9-13

Photoshopping monsters into your wedding photos is now a thing. It started not that long ago, when a wedding photo featuring a T. rex chasing the wedding party went very, very viral. Now it seems every couple getting married wants a shot of the wedding party fleeing a threat to be pasted in later. From the Maclean's article: "'We're still trying to figure out what goes in the background,' [photographer] Tony [Lombardo] says. 'The couple hasn’t figured out yet what they want to be chased by.'" AT-ATs and Sharktopus have already been done. It's already getting old. Has it already gone too far [via]?
comment posted at 6:12 PM on Jul-6-13

"For the last two years, the agency has kept a list of same-sex couples whose green card petitions were denied, the officials said, anticipating that the Supreme Court would eventually weigh in on DOMA. Those denials will now be reversed without couples having to present new applications, if no other issues have arisen." -- The US Immigration and Citizenship Services agency has issued the first green card to a partner in a gay marriage.
comment posted at 8:22 AM on Jul-2-13

A sense of foreboding is rising across an increasingly troubled land.
One year after being democratically elected Egypt's President Morsi defies threat of military coup.
Some say the Egyptian Army Can’t Oust President Without ‘American Approval'
Al Jazeera - Egypt opposition to continue mass protests.
Background: Financial Times Egypt in transition.
comment posted at 1:58 AM on Jul-2-13

"Polish architect Jakub Szczesny claims to have built the world's narrowest house, just 122 centimetres across at its widest point."
comment posted at 2:12 AM on Jun-29-13

Forest fires due to slash and burn farming in Sumatra, Indonesia have led to unprecedented air pollution levels in Singapore and Malaysia. In Singapore particularly, Facebook and Twitter are aflame as well. For a country used to very clean air, the sudden pollution has led to public outcry, with air purifiers and face masks being snatched off the shelves. So far, no stop-work-order has been issued, and there are complaints that the government is not tackling the situation rapidly enough. Indonesia is working to put out the fires and is considering cloud seeding; their response to pressure from Singapore to do more was that Singaporeans should stop behaving like children and not disturb their domestic affairs. While image macros about the 2013 haze continue to fill up Facebook feeds, some people are taking the whole affair in a more irreverent way.
comment posted at 4:03 AM on Jun-20-13
comment posted at 6:17 AM on Jun-20-13
comment posted at 7:24 AM on Jun-20-13