🐱 Interesting clickbait, op-eds, fluff pieces and other smaller stories

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/24/caitlyn-jenner-halloween-costume-sparks-social-media-outrage-.html

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...een-costume-labeled-817515?utm_source=twitter

It's nowhere near October, but one ensemble is already on track to be named the most controversial Halloween costume of 2015.

Social media users were out in full force on Monday criticizing several Halloween retailers for offering a Caitlyn Jenner costume reminiscent of the former-athlete's Vanity Fair cover earlier this year.

While Jenner's supporters condemned the costume as "transphobic" and "disgusting" on Twitter, Spirit Halloween, a retailer that carries the costume, defended the getup.

"At Spirit Halloween, we create a wide range of costumes that are often based upon celebrities, public figures, heroes and superheroes," said Lisa Barr, senior director of marking at Spirit Halloween. "We feel that Caitlyn Jenner is all of the above and that she should be celebrated. The Caitlyn Jenner costume reflects just that."

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

As utterly as unpleasant as it sounds, there is a better way to stave of dehydration, apparently. I've read a few sailing disaster memoirs, and apparently giving yourself a urine enema is the solution. Drinking it, you keep upping your toxin and sodium levels, but the intestine/colon largely filter it out. Fellow kiwis can thank me for this tidbit in the unlikely event this information ever proves useful!

Great....

Now, had I been shipwrecked before learning of this, either I would survive, having drank urine, but could live with it, or I would die of dehydration. No scenario involved anything in my ass. Now there's a third possibility where I survive but have to live the rest of my life as someone who pumped his own piss up his ass.

 

[Dracula's Spirit Animal]

Great....

Now, had I been shipwrecked before learning of this, either I would survive, having drank urine, but could live with it, or I would die of dehydration. No scenario involved anything in my ass. Now there's a third possibility where I survive but have to live the rest of my life as someone who pumped his own piss up his ass.

Could be worse... You might have to do it with your whole family!

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-18877090

 

[BONE_Buddy]

This aught to brighten everyone's day:

Stray mongrel beats pedigrees to become elite Indian sniffer dog

Some 18 months after being rescued from stone-throwing children, a street-dwelling mongrel has emerged as India's top dog in the country's elite bomb- and drug-sniffing squad.

www.telegraph.co.uk

Stray mongrel beats pedigrees to become elite Indian sniffer dog

archived 6 Mar 2019 18:32:36 UTC

archive.today

Some 18 months after being rescued from stone-throwing children, a street-dwelling mongrel has emerged as India's top dog in the country's elite bomb- and drug-sniffing squad.

"Asha" - meaning "hope" in Hindi - was rescued by West Bengal police when they found her being mistreated outside their training facility.

"The dog was bleeding when she was taken inside the campus," senior West Bengal Police Training Academy official Dipankar Bhattacharya told AFP.

Officers originally intended keeping the mixed-breed stray as a pet, but Asha turned out to have a nose every bit as good as the German Shepherds and Labradors usually trained to sniff out explosives and drugs.
Sajal Mondal, the head of the academy, said she passed the gruelling training with flying colours and that drugs and explosives like TNT were no match for Asha's keen sense of smell.

"She performed better than her pedigree peers, jumping nearly six feet (two metres) high and crossing hurdles," he said.

"She is also our fastest runner."

Asha is the first ever mixed-breed dog to join the 30-strong unit.

 

[RodgerDodger]

Our buddy Lemnard French has a nice video on it.

Supreme Court: Copyright Registration Required before Suit

The U.S. Supreme Court has recently held that Copyright Registration is required before a Plaintiff can sue. The Copyright Office must grant or refuse an app...

www.youtube.com

The case is Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp vs Wall Street.com

https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/briefs/fourth-estate-pub-ben-corp-v-wall-street-com-138-s-ct-720-2018.pdf

(sorry not sure how to embed a PDF onto the new forum pages as a spoiler?)

TLDR; in a unanimous ruling SCOTUS affirms that in order to sue for Copyright Infringement you must have not simply applied for Copyright Registration, but completed the process and received the Federal Registration Number. This could have some interesting repercussions. To my eye it may create a conflict between the 1976 Copyright Laws and the DMCA. As making a DMCA claim without having the Federal Registration number is a guaranteed failure.

For the second time in under a month the Notorious RBG gets to author a 9-0 decision.

 

[Fareal]

The WIPR article isn't locked to subs yet, worth a read: https://www.worldipreview.com/news/...ive-copyright-registrations-say-lawyers-17605

tl;dr you wanna register that shit as soon as possible since the application approach just got shot in the head by the Notorious RBG

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Explain this decision to me using Edison and Tesla please. What happens with edison's racing to the patent office? Does it still work?

 

[Keystone]

Alex Trebek has stage 4 Pancreatic cancer

Entertainment Tonight on Twitter: "Alex Trebek just shared a heartbre…

archived 6 Mar 2019 22:43:55 UTC

archive.vn

 

[Graffiti canvas]

So apparently this article was published online:

The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same

Complexity science explains why efforts to reject the mainstream merely result in a new conformity.

www.technologyreview.com

The article above analyzes how the movement of people wishing to buck the trend of styles and be "non conforming" end up looking and behaving the same.

The header image includes a photograph of a man dressed as what you'd describe as a hipster. Beanie, Rough Beard, Crisp button up shirt....

After the article was published, someone contacted the online magazine via a "...furious email..." claiming that the article was slanderous towards him because they implied that he was a hipster and used his image without permission.

Except it wasn't him. It was a Getty Stock Image and just proved that the "hipster" look is absolutely a conformist appearance if you can't even tell yourself apart from someone else.

Hipster whines at tech mag for using his pic to imply hipsters look the same, discovers pic was of an entirely different hipster

YEAH! SCIENCE

www.theregister.co.uk

 

[Remove Goat]

Lmao people are now looking like NPCs not just talking like them

 

[Lemmingwise]

Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same

Because there is only one way to look and smell like a bum, and taking care of hygiene or style is conformist to consumer culture.

 

[FierceBrosnan]

There is so much comedic irony here i don't even know where to start but I know I never want it to end.

 

[CWCchange]

KALE MAN BAD!

 

[Hux]

?I'm a Hipster Kid, non-conforming as could be
You'd be non-conforming too if you looked Just Like Me?

 

[TowinKarz]

For all their uniqueness, snowflakes eventually make the same pile of white shit.

 

[Edgeworth]

This entire argument is just a veritable ouroboros

 

[pwnest injun]

Personally, I think someone was just fucking with the tech rag, by doing an irony.

 

[Digital Thunder]

For all their uniqueness, snowflakes eventually make the same pile of white shit.

And much like the snow, they'll all melt away into ordinary puddles, though at least snow isn't insufferably self-important through any of it.

I love the phrasing of "furious email". Embodying a quintessential, cookie-cutter look is that important to this one guy, huh.

 

[AP 297]

Embodying a quintessential, cookie-cutter look is that important to this one guy, huh.

Of course it is. Its how he tells the world that "I am different! I am special! There is only one of me because I look this way just like all the other different special people do!".

Telling him that he is no different than all the other millions of hipsters who wear the same thing, look the same way, and even just about think the same way, destroys his very fragile sense of self.

Personally, I think it would have been better not to publish this and let them all keep thinking they are special spending hundreds of dollars to look like bums.

It is like some people can't let me have my fun in life.

 

[keyboredsm4shthe2nd]

As utterly as unpleasant as it sounds, there is a better way to stave of dehydration, apparently. I've read a few sailing disaster memoirs, and apparently giving yourself a urine enema is the solution. Drinking it, you keep upping your toxin and sodium levels, but the intestine/colon largely filter it out. Fellow kiwis can thank me for this tidbit in the unlikely event this information ever proves useful!

"HEY! HEY MAN YOU GOTTA STICK YOUR PEEN IN ME AND OPEN ThE FLOoDGATES! NO NO IT'S NOT GAY BECAUSE I'M DEHYDRATED, GET IT? Where are you going?"

 

[GrungyLawnChlorinate]

Feds: Forgery operation produced over 10,000 fake documents

A man from a primarily Hispanic town in Oregon has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to produce false documents after agents found a document-forging lab in his.

www.charlotteobserver.com

Located in an apartment in a primarily Hispanic town in Oregon, a clandestine lab churned out thousands of fake Social Security cards, drivers’ licenses and immigration documents that were sold around the United States for years.

The operation, revealed for the first time Tuesday in a federal court document, showed that a syndicate based in Oaxaca, Mexico, operated the forged-document factory in Woodburn, a town of 24,000 in an agricultural region a half-hour’s drive from Portland.

Employers, including farms, nurseries and wineries, routinely employ people who are in the United States illegally but who can produce a Social Security card or work visa. Many agricultural employers say it’s not their responsibility — and that they lack the expertise — to determine if the documents are genuine.

The arrest on Sept. 21, 2017, of Miguel Merecias-Lopez in a fast-food restaurant parking lot in Woodburn reveals how, in many cases, such documents are produced. Merecias-Lopez pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in Portland to conspiracy to produce false identification documents and possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine. He had gone to the parking lot to sell more than a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of meth, prosecutors said.

Homeland Security Investigations had already been looking at the syndicate they called the “Fraud Doc Ring” before the arrest, said Kevin Sonoff, spokesman for the United States Attorney’s Office in Portland. After Merecias-Lopez was arrested, investigators went to his apartment and found computers, scanners, laminators, cameras and a high-resolution printer.

“The fraud ring operated in Woodburn for more than a decade and produced over 10,000 fraudulent documents that they distributed in Woodburn or mailed to customers around the United States,” U.S. Attorney Billy Williams and Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Sax said in the plea agreement posted Tuesday in court documents. Previous detailed court documents remain under seal.

The Fraud Doc Ring communicated with customers using Facebook, email, Snapchat and in person, the plea deal states. Customers emailed, texted or mailed the ring digital passport-style photos for insertion into the fake ID cards, or visited a clandestine photography lab in Woodburn where their photos were taken, the plea agreement says. Customers paid electronically through PayPal, through the mail or in person.

In the apartment, agents found dozens of security images and seals used in legitimate identification documents. They also found stored digital photos of more than 4,000 customers.

The Fraud Doc Ring produced a wide array of documents, including drivers’ licenses for over 25 different states, Social Security cards, lawful permanent resident cards, U.S. and Mexican birth certificates and marriage licenses.

There is a huge market for such documents. Immigrants working illegally in this country accounted for about 46 percent of America’s roughly 800,000 crop farmworkers in recent years, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the U.S. Departments of Labor and Agriculture. Many more work in the nation’s hospitality, service and construction industries.

Merecias-Lopez’s attorney, Brian Walker, did not immediately respond to emailed and phone messages requesting comment. Merecias-Lopez said in his petition to plead guilty that he has a 10th-grade education, and that he understands that conviction can lead to imprisonment and deportation.

Merecias-Lopez, 24, moved to Woodburn from Oaxaca in January 2017, long after the fraud ring began operating. He is responsible for creating at least 300 fraudulent U.S. government documents, according to the plea agreement.

Government prosecutors and Walker are jointly recommending a low sentence. For the false documents conviction, he faces a maximum 15 years in prison and $250,000 fine. The drug conviction carries a maximum sentence of life in prison with a 10 year mandatory minimum sentence and a $10 million fine.

Sonoff said no other arrests have been made and that the current criminal inquiry focuses only on Merecias-Lopez and his co-conspirators, not on their customers.