This stealthy undertaking was not an act of robbery or espionage but rather a crucial operation in what would become an association called UX, for “Urban eXperiment.” UX is sort of like an artist’s collective, but far from being avant-garde—confronting audiences by pushing the boundaries of the new—its only audience is itself. More surprising still, its work is often radically conservative, intemperate in its devotion to the old. Through meticulous infiltration, UX members have carried out shocking acts of cultural preservation and repair, with an ethos of “restoring those invisible parts of our patrimony that the government has abandoned or doesn’t have the means to maintain.” The group claims to have conducted 15 such covert restorations, often in centuries-old spaces, all over Paris. - Wired.com
"The New French Hacker-Artist Underground"
posted by The Whelk
on Jan 24, 2012 -
20 comments
Corporations don't dodge taxes. People do. "The report found that the CEOs of 25 major companies paid themselves more than their companies paid in Federal income taxes. Exhibit 1 on page 31 names and shames them (well, assuming they are capable of shame), and they include John J. Donahoe of eBay, Robert Coury of Mylan Labs, Jeff Immelt of GE, and Robert Kelly of Bank of New York. The New York Times article on the report elicited some not-convincing rebuttals."
NYT version
[via]
posted by marienbad
on Sep 1, 2011 -
72 comments
Barry Landau, "America's Presidential Historian," collector, author, and expert on White House ephemera, and one
Jason Savedoff, a Canadian golden boy who occasionally went by the name of
J-Swing at my old stomping grounds, and who has assumed a number of aliases since, have been charged with
"conspiring to steal historical documents from museums in Maryland and New York, and selling them for profit." Investigation has revealed
further complications.
posted by Hyperbolus
on Aug 6, 2011 -
24 comments
Shortly before noon yesterday morning an art thief walked into the
Weinstein Gallery near San Francisco's Union Square, grabbed Pablo Picasso's 1965 pencil drawing,
"Tête de Femme (Head of a Woman)" and strolled casual out of the museum to a waiting cab. Witnesses described the man as a "well dressed" "white man about 6 feet tall, age 30 to 35, wearing a dark jacket, a white shirt, dark pants, large dark glasses and loafers with no socks." Surveillance cameras at nearby restaurant Lefty O'Doul's appear to have
captured the suspect as he walked briskly down the street, Picasso under arm.
“
Most galleries that show this caliber of artwork don’t put it on street level,” said gallery owner Rowland Weinstein. “It’s very upsetting, because my goal is to keep this kind of work accessible to the public.” Weinstein says the piece was insured and is valued at $200,000.
posted by 2bucksplus
on Jul 6, 2011 -
101 comments
Grand Theft Rowhome: A look into a seemingly-lucrative business of stealing deeds to Philadelphia houses armed with nothing more than pen, paper, and a forged notary stamp. The depressing take-home message? The city's bureaucracy can't get its act together enough to slow down the practice, and budget cuts are only making that worse...
[more inside]
posted by supercres
on Oct 11, 2010 -
12 comments
HEIST: Paintings by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani and Fernand Léger, worth ~$100 million, stolen! (Washington Post link)
[more inside]
posted by OmieWise
on May 21, 2010 -
54 comments
Boston College sociology professor
Lisa Dodson does research on poverty, public policy, and low-income work and family life. Recently her research took a different turn, as she discovered through interviews with U.S. managers in charge of low-income workers that some of them feel "(a) sense of unfairness (...) as a supervisor, making enough to live comfortably while overseeing workers who couldn’t feed their families on the money they earned. That inequality, he told her, tainted his job, making him feel complicit in an unfair system that paid hard workers too little to cover basic needs." Professor Dobson talks about this phenomenon, and how it plays out in that some managers undermine the system, in interviews
in the Boston Globe and
on public radio.
[more inside]
posted by Harald74
on Mar 2, 2010 -
35 comments
"No one guessed the truth, which was simpler, and therefore stranger, than their wildest theories: that the scared young woman so hotly pursued by South Carolina police, the Secret Service, federal marshals and even the U.S. Army was actually on a bizarre and misguided journey of self-discovery." Rolling Stone reports on the strange case of Esther Reed:
The Girl Who Conned The Ivy League.
(via Metachat)
posted by The Whelk
on Jan 17, 2010 -
46 comments
Scotland Yard called him the
the Napoleon of Crime. The
Pinkertons called him the most remarkable criminal of them all.
Adam Worth started as a pickpocket in New York and eventually became one of the greatest criminals of all time and the inspiration behind Sherlock Holmes' nemesis Professor Moriarty.
[more inside]
posted by Arbac
on Jun 3, 2009 -
9 comments
The commercials are all over television — and they certainly are attention-grabbing. They’re the ones where the heavy, bald guy is sitting in his easy chair talking in a squeaky female voice about all the clothes he bought — including a bustier. Or the little old lady speaking with the gruff voice of a younger man about the sweet motorcycle she now owned. Identity theft is a serious crime — one that is occurring with an alarming frequency. The
Identity Theft Manifesto explains
how criminals get your personal info, and
what you can do about it.
posted by netbros
on Jun 1, 2009 -
15 comments
Igor Kenk was arrested for bicycle theft in Toronto on July 17. Here's an audio documentary that includes an interview with the man himself:
Steal This Bike (be warned, a lot of profanity, and a little pretentious).
[more inside]
posted by Chuckles
on Jul 29, 2008 -
46 comments
Now Viacom will STEAL your movie Viacom has claimed ownership of an independent filmmaker's film and now she has to fight them for it. They allow her to leave it on YouTube but they claim ownership and they get to collect data on who's watching.
posted by njohnson23
on Jul 22, 2008 -
47 comments
